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MARRIAGE AND 
EFFICIENCY 

BY 

CARL RAMUS, M.D. 

MEMBER ASSOCIATION OF MILITARY SURGEONS, U. S. 

MEMBER AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION 

FORMERLY AMERICAN DELEGATE OFFICE INTERNATIONALE 

d'hYGIENE PUBLIQUE, PARIS 

MEMBER ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF THE PACIFIC 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

XLbc Icnfcltetbocfter prees 

1922 






Copyright, 1922 

by 

Carl Ramus 



Made in the United States of America 



yi^ 




JUL 18 1922 



©CI.AB77561 



DEDICATED TO 

DOCTOR MARIE CARMICHAEL STOPES 

OF LONDON 



AUTHOR'S NOTE 



IE several Chapters of the book were written from 
lemoranda at different times during many years, as 
bpportunity and various duties permitted. Therefore 
the book as a whole lacks the continuity of one written 
according to a fixed outline. Time does not allow re- 
grouping and rewriting of the material. Rather than 
delay its publication indefinitely, it is offered in its 
present form. 



INTRODUCTION 



IE pursuit of happiness is Man's strongest 
latural urge. It is dignified in the American 
)eclaration of Independence as one of the 
laHenable rights endowed by the Creator. 
)riental philosophy in its ancient wisdom has 
mg claimed that happiness expands the con- 
[^iousness, and defines it as *'moreness of the 
5elf/' And now in our own day Western 
:ience has discovered that happiness, health, 
md efficiency are directly related, and in a 
leasure interdependent ; thus linking up with 
^he older axiom, ''The purpose of philosophy 
jis the end of pain/' 

Bards and poets of all ages have lauded 
larriage as the Temple of Happiness, and all 
^ho have entered marriage have done so main- 
ly in the pursuit of happiness. Many who 
have found therein bitter disappointment 

vii 



INTRODUCTION 

believe that married felicity is a phantom 
whose only purpose is race perpetuation. But 
still for the vast majority marriage holds its 
ancient place in minds and hearts as the most 
beneficent giver of happiness and heart rest. 

Many books tell of marriage and its prob- 
lems. But all that I have read, with one 
splendid exception, lack the feature absolutely 
necessary to make them really and practically 
helpful, and without which all the rest counts 
for little — frankness. That lack I have tried 
to supply in this book. It may be thought by 
some that in my frankness I have reached toe 
primary a level of crude simplicity in dealing 
with the subjects of personal mannerisms and 
habits ; it may be thought that the cultivated 
intellectual person stands in no need of in- 
struction on these points to the extent to which 
I have gone. 

Professional and social observation force me 
to take the opposite view, and have awakened 
me to the startling latitude which many 
persons of real refinement unconsciously allow 
themselves in this same field of personal 

viii 



INTRODUCTION 

habits. And yet a very little honest self-ex- 
amination will convince anyone how easy it is 
to drift into sins of omission and carelessness 
until they become habits, and habits that 
make one less lovable and less attractive. 
Therefore I have deliberately painted these 
dangers in strong colors, being convinced from 
personal observation that too much stress can 
hardly be laid on them in this connection. 
I Physicians, more than any others, necessa- 
! rily have opportunities to see and know people 
as they are^ in happiness or sorrow, in the 
I midst of their problems and their ignorance, 
j divested of shams and camouflage. Hence the 
\ true physician stands in the place of a con- 
j fessor, for with his wider knowledge of life, 
I and of causes and effects, he, more than any 
I priest, has the great privilege of leading people 
j out of the sins and sorrows of ignorance into 
1 the happiness of right knowledge. 
I This book is not addressed to physicians and 
^ scientists but to the educated and cultured 
j laity. It tells people the practical and essen- 
I tial things that physicians seldom tell ; not that 

IX 



INTRODUCTION 

physicians desire to withhold helpful informa- 
tion, but because hardly one in ten considers 
the question from any but the materialistic 
side. 

In the final stmiming up, the things really 
worth while are the heart ties. Intellect and 
its achievements are sterile, except as they 
minister to Love in its widest aspect as Ser- 
vice. Furthermore, Intellect can never do its 
best work until liberated from emotional 
stress, until the heart is at rest. 

Love has nothing to fear from Truth, but 
selfishness has everything to fear. Selfishness 
and ignorance are the twin deadly enemies of 
Love, thriving in secrecy and darkness, but 
disintegrating in the light of Truth. It can 
be confidently said to many, if not yet to all, 
whose lives are darkened by married un- 
happiness, ''The Truth shall make you free.'' 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

DEALS AND Conditions .... 

tie Dream of Union — Disillusionments — Alternatives — 
Pessimistic Explanation — Intuitive Convictions — 
Love Superlative — Ignorance and Inharmony — Social 
Lessons — Strains on [Friendships — Relativity of 
Friendship — Friendship and Sex — Bulwarks of Society 
— Dangerous Tendencies — The Problem, Old and New 
— Happiness and PubHc Health — Heart Hunger — The 
Question of Satisfaction — Camouflage or Facts — 
Bernard Shawns Alternative — -General Causes of Mar- 
ried Unhappiness — Ignorance — Selfishness — Careless- 
ness — Lack of Frankness — Economic Stress — Unhap- 
piness Mostly Preventable. 



CHAPTER II 

!^ERMANENT INCOMPATIBILITIES 

»Jormal Physical Basis Essential — Beauty and Love — Quix- 
otic Sentiments — Eugenic Crimes — **A11 Defectives 
are Bad " — Age — Health — Habits — Snoring — Reli- 
gion -—Temperament — Selfishness — Caste — Inter- 
ests — Economic Stress. 



i6 



CHAPTER III 

'The Sexual Cycle 

Important Rediscovery — Essential in Sex Education — 
Menstruation — Ebb and Flow of Sexual Tide — Rhyth- 

xi 



26 



CONTENTS 

mic Alternations — Exceptions — "Psychological Mo- 
ments" — ** Love at First Sight" — MateriaHstic Theory 
— Other Hypotheses — Glamour of the Moment — Per- 
ception of the Beautiful — Sick Bed Romances — Inept 
Conclusions — ^Average Marriages Motivated Solely by 
Sex — Why Not? — Where Discrimination Needed — 
Reciprocity — Birth Control. 

CHAPTER IV 

Personal Hygiene 41 

"Old Wives for New" — Personal Carelessness Frequent — 
Professional Observations — Delicacy and Sensitiveness 
— Effects of Odors — Perfumes — Emanations — Mutual 
Care before Marriage — Mutual Negligence after Mar- 
riage — Vital Importance of Daily Bath — Offensive 
Breath and its Causes and Remedies — Care of the Feet 
— Their Frequent Negligence — Prevention and Cure 
of Sweating and Smelling of Feet — Excessive Perspira- 
tion and Remedies — Hygiene of Menstruation — Care- 
lessness of Many Women — Separate Beds — Example 
from Balzac — Disgust from Vile Personal Odors — 
Psychic Shock and Sexual Coldness — "Cleanliness is 
Next to Godliness." 

CHAPTER V 

Chronic Irritation . . . . .61 

Offenses to the Sight — Neglect in Dress — Modesty and 
Nudity — Small Irritations — Artificial Standards — 
Early Training — Practical Importance of Non-Essen- 
tials — Individual Conceptions of Manners and Vul- 
garity — Pipe Smoking at Home — Indifference to Com- 
fort of Others — Inopportune Requests — Pipe Smoking 
as a Result of Chronic Irritation — Anaesthetic Effects 
of Alcohol and Tobacco — Bad Temper and Nagging — 
Be a Sport or Quit — Fresh Air Fiends and Otherwise — 

xii 



CONTENTS 

Live and Let Live — Give and Take — Cultivate 
Adaptability. 

CHAPTER VI 

Fatigue ..... 73 

Universal Property of Matter — Fatigue and Pain — 
Nature's Warnings — Law of Alternation — Action and 
Repose — Uninterrupted Pleasure may Become Pain 
— Bodies and Sense Organs Tire — Beauty Itself Re- 
mains — Need for Periods of Solitude — Experience 
Built into Character — Effects of Great Experiences — 
Meditation — Emotional Stagnation — Physical Analo- 
gies — Reactions of Electrified Bodies — Human Analo- 
gies — Child and Parents — Magnetism and Demag- 
netization — The Kiss of Welcome — Polarization — 
Sympathetic Vibration — Response and Thrill — Fa- 
tigue or Excitement — Laws of Human Attraction 
and Repulsion. 

I CHAPTER VII 

I Conventional Bogies . . . .82 

Double Beds — Obsolete Custom — Modern People more 
Highly Strung — Continuous Intimacy and Nerve 
Strain — Frankness Lacking — Enduring each other 
when Tired — Mutual Demagnetization — Siamese 
Twin Ideal — Typical Examples — Family Fixations — 
Herd Instinct — Oriental and Continental Customs — 
Tiresome Relatives in Home — The Mother-in-law — 
Home Should be First — False Pride — Shyness — Sensi- 
tiveness — Misunderstandings — Polarization — Heart 
Isolation — Reunion. 

CHAPTER VIII 

Jealousy and Tears ..... 93 

Frequency of Jealousy— Doubt — Fear — Humiliation — 
Anger — Resentment — Hatred — Revenge — Desire to 

xiii 



IL 



CONTENTS 

Hold— To Get Rather than to Give— Vanity— Self- 
love — ^Jealousy, Wounded Vanity and Wounded Self- 
love — Jealousy Irritating — Criticism and Protest — 
Demands, Rights and Inspiration — Touchiness and 
Inferiority — Jealousy the Negation of Love — Tears — 
, Heroines of Old-fashioned Novels — Poetic Miscon- 
ceptions — Beauty and Tears — The Facts — Tears and 
Lack of Self-control — Personal Carelessness — Bad 
Temper — Complete Polarization — Mutual Disgust — 
Conventional Jealousy — Knowledge the Remedy — 
Law Suits for Alienation of Affections. 

CHAPTER IX 
Variety of Interests . . . .105 

Work in Common — Mutual Interests — Separation and Re- 
union — Basis of Real Friendships — Several Mutual 
Interests — The Sex Element — Romance and Poetry of 
Life — Variety the Spice — Man's Kaleidoscopic Ideal 
of Woman — Variety in Moods — Variety in Capacities 
— Ordinary Friendships — Many-sided Personalities — 
Sharing of Interests — Friendships in Marriage — ^Alter- 
nation of Interests — Use and Abuse — Laws of Attrac- 
tion not Altered by Marriage — The Cycle of Friend- 
ship — The Cycle of Mutual Interest — Intimacy and 
Separation — Deductions from Marriage, Courtship, 
and Illicit Love — Factors in Disillusionment — Con- 
tinuous Intimacy — Conventions and Necessity — 
Romance can be Conserved. 

CHAPTER X 

Love and Beauty 114 

Oriental Psychology — The Emotion of Beauty — Love and 
Beauty — Beauty and Attraction — Individual Concept 
of Beauty — A Working Definition — Beauty and In- 
spiration — Beauty and Sex — The Mutual Response — 

xiv 



CONTENTS 

The Effect on Conduct — Beauty as a Divine Thing — 
Essential Considerations in Married Happiness — 
Transference to Child — Absolute Need for Co-opera- 
tion in Work or Service — The Individual Ideal of 
Beauty — If Definite it should be Sought for — Fate or 
Chance — Fetiches — Ideals of Beauty of Special Parts 
of Body — Examples — Importance for Durable Love — 
Physical Ideals and Inner Needs — Complements — 
Affinities — Sense of Duty — Where Wrong Comes in — 
One Continuing to Love; the Other Ceasing to Love — 
Conditions Responsible — Inspiration Lost — Fatigue — 
Psychic Shock — Transference — Quality of the Love — 
Indifference and Effort — Polarization — Unselfishness 
— Preconceived False Ideals of Love — Knowledge of 
Laws. 



CHAPTER XI 



t„.„„.. „ 

\ > Contract of Marriatge— Former Ideas as to Marital Rights 
— Examples — Great Improvement over Past — Indi- 
cates Development of "Community Conscience" — 
Promises to Love and Honor — Psychological Impossi- 
bilities Unless Inspired — How to Hold a Love — In- 
spiration the Only Way— Suggestions — Habits and 
Mannerisms — Privacy and Reserve — Reproaches and 
Demands — Love to Give, Not to Get — Restore the 
Conditions before Marriage — Other Friendships — 
Fundamental Differences in Sex Expression — First 
Principles — The Eternal Woman — The Age-old Way 
— Equal Powers and Opportunities of the Sexes — The 
Woman's Part — Knowledge and Wisdom — Personal 
Attractiveness of Woman an Inspiration to Man — 
Nature's Way — Fancies and Affinities — Causes for 
Straying of Interest — Personal NegHgence — The Way 
to Recover — Polarization and Repression — Transfer- 
ence as an Emotional Outlet — Finesse and Gracious- 
ness — Their Practical Value — Frankness and Finesse 

XV 



CONTENTS 

— Rupert Hughes on Marriage — Is Marriage a Bunco 
Game? — The Golden Rule— Always Show Each Other 
only One's Best Side after Marriage as before. 

CHAPTER XII 

Continence and Fidelity .... 145 

Psychology of Professional Attitude — Its Contrasts — 
Psychology of Subject Ignored — Opposing Viewpoints 
Max Huhner on Continence — His Citations from Old 
Writers — Psychology and Psychoanalysis Ignored — 
Conventional Attitude — Effects of Continence — 
Transformation or Repression — Sex a Personal Matter 
— Considerations Affecting Continence — Fidelity and 
Monogamy — Right Social Evolution — Suffering In- 
flicted — Secrecy and Deception — Self-respect — 
^Esthetic Considerations — Attimement — Risk of 
Disillusionment — Friendship and Inspiration — Re- 
morse — The Happiness of Others Concerned — Self- 
control — Fidelity — Meaning of the Word — Law 
and Church — Mental Fidelity — Physical or Heart 
Fidelity — The Bible on Fidelity — Treatment of N^- 
lected Mates — Divided Interests — Effects on Con- 
duct — Two Examples — Their Frequency — Superficial 
Judgments — ^A Broader View — Forel and Mental 
Substitution — Conflicting Opinions — Psychology of 
Forel Method— The Wife's Attitude—The Part of 
the Other Woman — Vicarious Fidelity — Ideals and 
Realities — Interest and Inspiration — Sex Interest 
Involuntary — Facts and Frankness — Individual De- 
velopment and Conduct — Conventions Serve Race 
Needs — Self Control and Progress. 

CHAPTER XIII 

Psychoanalysis 160 

Remarkable Interest in Psychoanalysis — Psychoanalysis 
and Psychology — Psychology Appeals to Intellect — 

xvi 



CONTENTS 

Psychoanalysis Appeals to Emotions — New Light on 
Sexual Question — Excessive Application of Sexual 
Theory — Causes for It — The ''CEdipus Complex" — 
Examples of Misapplication — Profound Influence of 
Psychoanalysis on Modem Thought — The Uncon- 
scious and its Activities — Psychic Energy and Crea- 
tive Force — The Urges — Dream Signification as Index 
of Emotional Stress and Needs — The Censor — Dream 
Symbolism — Unfulfilled Desires — Rationalization and 
Self -analysis — Adverse Criticism — Examples — Con- 
trast — Repressed Desire and Compensatory Antago- 
nistic Outer Attitudes — Examples — Anthony Com- 
stock — Hysteria and Neuroses — Their Frequent Origin 
in Unhappy Marriages — Their Ultimate Causes — 
Psychoanalytic Treatment — Success Depends on Will 
Power of Patient — The Reverse of Hypnotism — 
Examples of Treatment — Removal of the First Cause 
— Importance of Knowledge of Female Sexual Cycle 
in Psychoanalytic Treatment — Moral Courage and 
Truth. 

CHAPTER XIV 

Individualism and its Consequences . .183 

Modem Growth of Individualism — Increased Mental 
and Emotional Activity — Woman's Suffrage — Pro- 
tected Lives of our Female Ancestors — Their Subser- 
vience and Dependence — The New Order — AU that it 
Means — Importance of Right Trend of Individualism 
— A Common Working Rule of Conduct — Social Con- 
ventions and Sexual Freedom — Personal Responsi- 
bility for Example Set — William James on Habit — 
Individualism and License — Dangers of Free Love — 
IndividuaHsm in Marriage — Mismating — Reaction- 
ary Fears — The Old and the New — Love with and 
without Imagination — Reactionary Ideal is Inferiority 
— Divorce — United Opinion of Deepest Students — 
The Highest Good—- The Attitude of the Church— 

xvii 



CONTENTS 

Effects of Freedom of Divorce — The Inevitable — Fair- 
ness towards Women — The Profound Symbolism of 
Short Skirts — Fashions and the Church. 

CHAPTER XV 

Economic Stress 198 

A New Type of Young Woman — Her Sex Standard — Facts 
about the Girls Themselves — Origin of Their Psychol- 
ogy — Marriage and Poverty — Influence of Education 
— Dread of Economic Slavery — Primitive Psychology 
of Female Chastity — Its Change under Modem Eco- 
nomic Stress — The Call of Sex — Free Love or Mar- 
riage? — The Handwriting on the Wall — The Need for 
a Constructive Alternative — W. L. George on the 
American Woman — Her Intolerable Economic Situa- 
tion — Wife or Mother? — Domestic Drudgery — Lack 
of Understanding by Men — Frugality of our Early 
Ancestors — Incidence of Wealth — Idleness, Sex Li- 
cense and National Decay — Economic Causes — 
Modem Times and Machinery — Adam Smith and 
Later Observers — The Capitalistic System and the 
War — Slaves of the System — The Advent of Henry 
Ford — The Blind Momentum of the System — The 
Economic Problem and the Marriage Problem are In- 
separable — The Signs of the Times. 

CHAPTER XVI 

Monogamy and Progress . . . . 210I 

National Sex Standards and Strengths — Northman and 
Latin — Outward Standards of Monogamy — Northern 
Attempt at Self-control in Sex — Latin Contempt for 
Same — Northern Ideals — Latin Cynicism — Turkey 
and Polygamy — Northern Nations Dominate Modem 
World— Psychology of Self-Control in Sex— Its Effect 
on Character and Efficiency — Male Tendency is To- 
wards Polygamy — Female Tendency against Po- 

xviii 



CONTENTS 

lygamy under Living Conditions — Present Tendency 
Result of Economic Stress — Monogamy Chosen by 
All Advanced Peoples — Indicates Woman's Growing 
Influence and Inspiration — Plurality of Women in 
Europe Following the War — Conventional Morality 
or Temporary Polygamy? — Their Practical Results 
— Conventions and Emergencies — National Birth 
Rates — Lesson of Monogamy in Self-control — Ideal 
of One Woman Ennobling — The Brighter Future. 

CHAPTER XVII 

Roosevelt on Marriage . . . .218 

His Views on Patriotism and Marriage — True for Majority 
— Require Modification for Minority — True Patriot- 
ism not Blind to Country's Faults — Love of Country 
not Necessarily Belief in Its Superiority — Recognition 
of Principle of National Equality — People of Mixed 
Stock Can and Do Love Two Countries Equally — 
Patriotism and Duty — Duty is Where Citizenship — 
Marriage — Can One Love a Third and Remain True? 
— Psychology of Love — Inspiration — Involuntary Re- 
action of Love — The Right Course of Action — Un- 
selfish Love the Best Guide to Conscience — Analogy 
between Loving Two Countries and Two Men or 
Women — Love for Another Cannot be Killed but its 
Outer Expression can be Controlled by the Will — 
Richard Wagner — The Inspiration of a Great Love — 
Roosevelt and his Inspiration — Man's Greatest 
Monument to Woman and Wife — The Realized Ideal 
— Peter the Great. 

CHAPTER XVIII 
Woman the Center . . . . .233 

Home not a Hearth but a Woman — Man's Greatest Inspir- 

I ation — Man's Ideal of Woman — Its Influence in His 

Evolution — Bulwer-Lytton on Heart-rest — The 

I xix 



CONTENTS 

World's Unrest — Its Restraint on Efficiency and Out- 
put — Poet and Scientist Agree — Havelock Ellis on 
Sex and Liberation — ^A Famous Example — Love 
Transcendent — The Lesson of the Ages — The Highest 
Thought— "The Infinite Love." 



XX 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 



"The heart must rest, that the mind may be active." 

BULWER LyTTON 



Marriage and Efficiency 

CHAPTER r 

IDEALS AND CONDITIONS 

The dearest dream of almost every man and 
woman is of tmion with one beloved, and of 
the great happiness that each will give the 
other. This dream has sustained many through 
long years of up-hill and discouraging effort; 
effort to prepare for the home and the mate 
and the real fruition of life. And then, too 
often, come disillusionment and imhappiness. 
To many people who have had this bitter 
experience and compared notes with others, 
there seems to be no satisfactory answer or 
solution possible. It appears to them inevi- 
table that married people sooner or later tire 
of each other and lose all mutual romantic 
interest. They accept what seems to be the 

3 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

inevitable, and thereafter live and act accord- 
ing to their natures or standards ; either living 
together in mutual and faithful boredom; or 
seeking from other persons some measure of 
the felicity they had dreamed of finding in each 
other. 

Fortimately for civilisation, however, there 
are others, disappointed but not disillusioned, 
who refuse to accept the pessimistic explana- 
tion for their unhappiness. They repel as 
false the idea that married happiness is neces- 
sarily impermanent or illusory, and passion- 
ately demand to know why it so often happens, 
and how it can be prevented. 

Most people, deep in their hearts, if not in 
their minds, believe or rather feel that some 
kind of a higher supervision exists ; that above 
and beyond all things material ''Is fixt a 
Power divine which moves to good," and that 
ultimately ' ' Only Its laws endure. ' ' They ask 
if it is credible that the Creative Power which 
is responsible for our existence should impel 
us to our noblest efforts through the inspira- 
tion of something which is not true? To them 

4 



IDEALS AND CONDITIONS 

it is a libel on that Power divine to assume that 
It would employ a gross deceit in order to 
bring to pass Its ends. It is not forgotten that 
great happiness and spiritual uplift can indeed 
be found in love for children and in work of 
service for others. But a true mutual love 
experience between a man and woman gives to 
each something superlative and not compa- 
rable with anything else. In courtship and 
even in illicit love the same man and woman 
repeatedly enjoy such sublime experiences 
together. Why, then, so often after marriage, 
do lovers no longer mean the same to each 
other, who before had touched the Olympian 
Heights? 

Because Love is of the Gods, its Temple 
sacred ground, which if profaned, casts out the 
offenders. Ignorance is no excuse, in sacred 
law as in common law. Disregard of the laws 
which govern htmian intercourse brings de- 
finite reactions . It makes no difference wheth- 
er the disregard comes from ignorance, 
selfishness or carelessness. The results are the 
same — inharmony and suffering. 

5 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

Those laws and their practical application 
to marriage are now understood, and it is the 
duty and the privilege of those who under- 
stand to spread their beneficent knowledge 
and make it available for all who need and 
desire it. 

The first lesson is found in the obvious facts 
of ordinary social life all about us. Friend- 
ships of long standing are often severely 
strained or even broken under the ordeals of 
business partnerships or of closer domestic 
relationships. Mild friendships, or at any rate, 
enjoyable acquaintanceships, turn into in- 
difference, boredom, or even positive dislike, 
when calls are made oftener than before, or 
near meal times, or when they last too long. 
People who have been reasonably good friends 
for many years while living far apart in dis- 
tance, are delighted when it becomes possible 
for one family to move into the neighborhood 
of the other, or across the street, or better 
still in the same apartment house. Both have 
the pleasantest anticipations of the increasing 
intimacy that will then be possible. But alas! ! 

6 



IDEALS AND CONDITIONS 

for Auld Lang Syne ! The closer association, 
from which so much was expected, soon begins 
to pall upon them. At first they wonder, 
then are disappointed, then hurt, and finally 
estranged. 

Average Western himianity is not much 
given to introspection or self -analysis. When 
they think at all about waning friendships 
they account for them in a way perfectly 
I satisfactory to themselves : they put the blame 
I on the other side. They may perhaps recall 
, the proverb: ''You never know people until 
i. you live with them.'' They are pained and 
I surprised to find faults and shortcomings in 
I their friends they never before suspected. 
! ''What a pity '' (they say)'' that people are so 
I disappointing and insincere ! If they were only 
I like ourselves! " If some mutual friend dared 
I to suggest that they also might possibly have 
( shortcomings that jarred on the others, that 
j friend would probably forfeit his place in their 
circle and be thought of as another disappoint- 
ment in friendship, another friend who did not 
wear well. 

i 

I 

L 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

Many friendships, then, depend for their 
continuance on time and distance factors. 
Some writer has aptly classified friends as one 
mile friends, two mile friends, and so on. In 
terms of time we could say one hour or two 
hoin* friends, more or less, but generally less. 
Or in terms of Einstein: All friendship is 
relative. 

So much for ordinary friendships. Turning 
from them to the aspect of friendship or 
affinity that is colored by difference in sex, 
the same thing is found, but on a greater and 
more serious scale. It is not necessary to refer 
to the mmierous divorce cases and scandals 
that fill so much space in the daily papers; 
they merely are the crest of the great tidal 
wave of domestic inharmony. We need only 
look within our own social circle to find ample 
material for observation and study of the dull 
average of domestic discord. Among our 
numerous married friends how many couples 
are there whom we believe to be really happy, 
romantically happy, still lovers? 

I once asked a friend why he had not mar- 

8 



J 



IDEALS AND CONDITIONS 

ried. He was a physician, a cultured, refined 
and fascinating man. This was his reply: 
''I am afraid to. The prospect is too discour- 
aging. Of all my classmates who married, 
half are divorced, and the other half want to 
be.'' 

The monogamous marriage and the family 
life are generally held to be the bulwarks of 
enduring civilizations. And yet they are 
being abandoned by both men and women, and 
apparently in increasing ntmibers, either 
through despair of finding enduring happiness, 
or because of economic stress. 

For some time now the Institution of Mar- 
riage has been like a ship without a pilot, 
drifting in fogs of uncertainty and inharmony. 
Only a few have ears that can hear the boom 
of the surf on the distant reef, towards which 
the marriage ship is steadily drifting. And 
' that earnest few, alive to the danger, are trying 

to change the course before it is too late. 
( The problem is in a sense as old as civiliza- 
I tion. But in recent years and under vastly 
I changed conditions of living it has taken on 

: 9 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

fnany new features. So great now is the stress 
and so poignant the cry for reHef that every 
possible effort should be made to give out 
the knowledge which is the remedy for, and 
the prevention of, married imhappiness in 
the majority of instances. 

The immense importance of public health 
is just beginning to be realized as a national 
asset. It is the truest wealth of a nation. But 
health is a far wider thing than freedom from 
certain contagious diseases. It is now known 
that health is profoundly influenced by many 
factors formerly ignored, by occupations and 
customs, by social habits, and especially by 
thought and emotion. Recent studies in 
neuro-physiology and psychoanalysis, and 
earlier work in hypnotism, demonstrate that 
the influences of thought and emotion are 
enormous on physical and mental health and 
on efficiency. 

In the presence of such definite scientific 
knowledge it is obvious that a social system 
whose atmosphere is charged with unhappiness I 
and morbid thought cannot be functioning at 

lO 



IDEALS AND CONDITIONS 

its best. Such negative thought and emotion 
must invariably react destructively on physical 
health and efficiency. 

It is theoretically and legally wrong for a 
htmgry man to steal food. But if he is starving 
he will take it if he can, right or wrong. Con- 
science with a full purse and a full stomach 
is one thing. Conscience with poverty and 
htmger is another. 

So with married virtue. Happiness is heart 
satisfaction, and unhappiness is heart htmger. 
Where marriage gives happiness, virtue is 
easy. Where marriage denies happiness, there 
is heart htmger; and heart hunger, like food 
hunger, first craves and then demands satis- 
faction. Only a well fed fool would tell a 
starving man not to steal food. But what 
should be our attitude towards married people 
stiff ering with heart hunger? 

This question shakes the foundations of 
Western society. The analogy between food 
htmger and heart htmger is obvious, but there 
are grave and far-reaching reasons which pre- 
j vent us from answering off-hand, ''satisfy 

II 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

your heart himger where you can.'' Those | 
reasons are discussed in several later chapters. 
The marriage problem has many aspects — | 
physical, mental, emotional, ethical, prag- 
matic, economic — and therefore gears in 
with the entire machinery of social structure 
and social evolution. 

Let us drop camouflage and face facts. | 
Inharmony in marriage grows steadily. In- 
harmony means unhappiness, and, in the view 
of the most advanced science, unhappiness is 
the equivalent of disease. In every instance 
where a disease progresses tmchecked, it 
eventually ruins or kills the body which is its 
host. So with married imhappiness. It is a 
true social disease. Unless something is done 
to stop it in the aggregate, the Institution of 
Marriage will be threatened. It is better to 
face the situation before the situation faces 
Society. Here are some of the facts: 

1. Marriage is a failure in an appalling 
number of instances. 

2. The common alternatives for married 
unhappiness are infidelity and free love. 

12 



IDEALS AND CONDITIONS 

3. The lesson of History is that when a 
civilisation abandons chastity for sex license, 
its break-up is approaching. 
lik 4. The majority of unhappy marriages are 
in the cultured classes ; among the intellectual 
and artistic, the sensitive and refined; in a 
word, the developed people who represent the 
brains and vision and progress of the Race. 

That is the situation, of which Bernard Shaw 
says: ''There is no shirking it; if marriage 
cannot be made to produce something better 
j than we are, marriage will have to go, or else 
^ the nation will have to go.'' Shaw was think- 
ing of Great Britain, but he might as well have 
spoken for the United States. 

Long investigation of the marriage problem 
shows that the incidence of happiness or 
sorrow depends on many factors or conditions, 
but they may for the moment be simmiarized 
in five: Ignorance, selfishness, carelessness, 
lack of frankness, and economic stress. 

Ignorance is by far the most serious and 
catastrophic. In marriage more than any- 
where else it covers inmmierable sins. It 

13 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

involves disregard of the laws which regulate 
htiman intercourse in partnership, friendship, 
and in sex relationships. 

Selfishness is in large extent a result of ig- 
norance, for when knowledge replaces igno- 
rance it is then seen that selfishness is futile 
and in the end self -destructive. Marriage is 
intended to be above all else a union, while 
selfishness tends always the other way, towards 
separation. 

Carelessness is a serious vice anywhere, 
limiting efficiency and stamping one as unre- 
liable and unsafe. In marriage it is especially 
dangerous and destructive, because it ignores 
the fine emotional adjustments which are 
essential in maintaining harmony and mutual 
love interest. Carelessness is incompatible 
with success in any line, and in marriage it is 
disastrous to romance. 

Lack of frankness is responsible for much 
misunderstanding and consequent unhappiness. 
It arises partly from diffidence and partly 
from sensitiveness — both of which mean self- 
consciousness, lack of confidence in oneself, 

14 



^ IDEALS AND CONDITIONS 

nd lack of trust in the other. Frankness is 
essential for mutual success in all partnerships 
and contracts, and marriage is the most im- 
portant and vital of partnerships. 

Economic stress, when severe, is the most 
obstinate limitation in marriage because the 
; most difficult to overcome. The previous 
four conditions are all subject to volition and 
control, and therefore are preventable. Eco- 
nomic stress, however, especially since the 
World War, often forms a barrier which in- 
dividual will and energy cannot surmount. 
Romance and poverty do not long hold to- 
gether in real life. Poverty means discomfort, 
I sordidness, dirt, and general ugliness; while 
\ romance connotes and requires the opposite 
conditions. If denied them in large measure, 
romance fades and dies, like a rose trans- 
planted from its sunny garden to a foul cellar. 
In simi, the principal causes of married tm- 
happiness, excepting severe economic stress, 
are in the main like the causes of most diseases 
— preventable. 



15 



CHAPTER II 

PERMANENT INCOMPATIBILITIES 

Every normal union must have an approxi- 
mately normal physical basis, otherwise no 
genuine, strong, mutual, romantic (sex) inter- 
est can be present or maintained. Indeed 
that might go without saying. It is because 
an abnormal physical union lacks the element 
of mutual beauty, and an unbeautiful physical 
tmion cannot be a medium for love exchanges. 
(I will discuss in another chapter what I mean 
by beauty.) Such sentiment as may some- 
times accompany an abnormal physical union 
may be devoted and self-sacrificing and even 
very noble in a mistaken sense, on the part of 
the normal partner, but it is sterile as to 
romance. Speaking more strongly, an ab- 
normal physical marriage is a sin against love, 
an eugenic crime, and should and eventually 

i6 



PERMANENT INCOMPATIBILITIES 

will be a statutory crime. From the racial 
standpoint, no normal individual has a right 
to link himself or herself with a defective, be 
the motive noble or quixotic. The modem 
eugenic attitude toward marriage receives 
support from a remarkable passage in the 
Hebrew Sacred writings, which says, ''AH de- 
fectives are bad." That statement taken 
literally would seem harsh, tmjust or cryptic 
except to students of Oriental philosophy who 
are familiar with the theories of Karma and 
Reincarnation. Such students will of course 
understand that the phrase, ''AH defectives 
are bad" means that defectives are such be- 
cause of their crimes in former lives ; and fur- 
thermore, measuring cause by effect, that their 
past records must have been very bad indeed. 
Extreme selfishness and even vanity are often 
present in himchbacks. 

Age. Great disproportion in ages is an 
impassable barrier to love. The so-called love 
of a very old man for a young wife is often 
nothing but a kind of post-mortem passion. 
It would be pathetic if it were not so com- 

17 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

pletely and ignobly selfish. The logical se- 
quence of senile passion is senile jealousy, with 
or without cause, but usually and naturally 
with cause. 

Health. Common sense dictates that only 
healthy persons should marry. The presence 
of a chronic incurable disease in one partner, 
even if not communicable, not only affects that 
one's physical efficiency, but inhibits emo- 
tional responsiveness. Hence the diseased 
partner is incapable of being the physical or 
emotional complement of the healthy one ; he 
or she is not a mate but an encumbrance. 

Habits. A bad or disagreeable physical 
habit or appetite is like a chronic disease; 
indeed drink and drug habits are true diseases. 
Many women have married men, knowing of 
their habits, but believing in their promises 
that they would reform after marriage. The 
common and sad experience is that such 
promises are seldom kept, and the unfortunate 
women soon realize that they are linked to 
men permanently disagreeable and incompat- 
ible, or to drunkards or drug fiends. The rule 

i8 



PERMANENT INCOMPATIBILITIES 

is that men who do not reform before marriage 
cannot do so afterwards. 

Snoring. This atrocious habit in one of the 
pair may be enough in itself to cause disgust 
in the other and quickly kill out all romance. 
Snoring is bad enough taken by itself as noise, 
but there is also to be considered the appear- 
ance of the snorer. Poets, at any rate the 
older poets, have often been enthusiastic 
' over sleeping beauty. Perhaps people have 
j changed, but however that may be we poor 
< disillusioned modems know that many of us 
do not look our best when asleep. Indeed, 
some look their very worst. This is notably 
so with snorers, whose expression may be 
profoundly unlovely and even idiotic. Snor- 
ing, like other bad habits, can be cured if there 
is sufficient will power and a sincere desire to 
be cured. All that is necessary is to employ 
someone to sit up all night with the sleeper and 
wake him every time he snores. One 
night may suffice, but it may take several 
until the unconscious or subjective mind is 
definitely impressed with the desire to stop 

19 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

the snoring. Also, snorers should have then- 
noses and throats examined by specialists. 

Religion. Difference in religious belief may 
become a serious or even hopeless cause of dis- 
cord, if one or both take their beliefs very 
earnestly as to the mere outer forms. And 
yet such a situation, like certain diseases, is 
entirely preventable. But the cure requires 
sufficient intelligence and liberality on the part 
of the pair to enable them to examine each 
other's beliefs. If they sincerely do so they will 
inevitably find that both agree perfectly as to 
essentials, and differ only in non-essentials. 
By essentials I mean the three basic teachings 
of all religions worthy of the name: (i) The 
existence of a Supreme Being or God ; (2) The 
immortality of the soul; and (3) good conduct. 
Very regrettably, however, most people, and 
even priests and ministers of religion seldom 
emphasize these essential things, but instead 
major the inmmierable minor differences, the 
doctrinal barnacles which attach themselves 
and grow on all churches and progressively 
impede their movement and usefulness as 

20 



PERMANENT INCOMPATIBILITIES 

vehicles of divine expression. If one partner 
is such a bigot as to cHng to the forms of a 
particular church or sect, and the other part- 
ner is hostile to them, their situation may be 
hopeless, because nothing is so inaccessible 
as the closed mind of religious intolerance, of 
whatever church. Hence marked difference 
in religious belief is a serious matter in mar- 
riage, especially when it comes to the education 
of the children. 

Temperament. Apart altogether from sel- 
fishness is the fact that certain natures require 
and crave more demonstration than others. 
Their physical nervous systems actually de- 
mand more exercise than those of other people. 
When such ardent natures are linked with cold 
or much less ardent ones, the inevitable result 
will be dissatisfaction. The ardent one will 
feel thwarted, and the other oppressed. If 
the difference in demonstrative power is con- 
siderable, nothing can be done, and the two 
are permanently incompatible. 

Selfishness. Extreme selfishness in one 
partner, whatever the social class, constitutes 

21 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

a permanent incompatibility for that pair 
which nothing else can make up for. Extreme 
selfishness signifies lack of personal develop- 
ment, and that of course means inferiority. 
The imion is therefore fundamentally hopeless 
in any higher sense, because there is nothing to 
build upon. To continue to live together could 
have no other results than to emphasize the 
bad qualities of the selfish one, and the gradual 
deterioration of the better one. 

Caste. Differences in social class, if very 
marked, may constitute a permanent barrier 
between any pair. Not because of the differ- 
ences in themselves, but on account of what 
those differences may mean in class habits, 
points of view, mannerisms, modes of speech 
and action, and general culture. Probably all 
have seen examples of marrying out of class, 
where one highly educated and refined is yoked 
with another just the reverse. And having 
seen, one can understand what that means. 
The developed personality suffers acutely 
from the other's inaccessible ignorance and 
lack of comprehension, and perhaps more than 

22 



I 



PERMANENT INCOMPATIBILITIES 

all the rest, uncouthness and vulgarity. The 
undeveloped partner is mystified and wonders 
what is the matter. He or she vaguely feels the 
other's superiority and writhes under it. And 
that tmeonscious recognition of inferiority 
takes expression outwardly as 'touchiness and 
mulishness, which are the unconscious, 
defensive reactions of all tmdeveloped per- 
sonalities. The higher one may, by the steady 
pull of the commonplace, be gradually dragged 
down to its level but the lower can never rise 
to the other's level. It sometimes happens, 
however, that developed personalities are bom 
into and raised in undeveloped classes. When 
they marry into a higher caste they usually 
make sincere and determined efforts to acquire 
the manners and polish of their new environ- 
ment. And they will succeed, though 
occasionally, under provocation or alcohol, 
the suppressed habits of early life will reassert 
themselves in all their original uncouthness. 
Yet early training can wonderfully accelerate 
personal evolution, as where children from the 
slimis are occasionally adopted by wealthy 

23 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

families and reared under refining influences 
of a cultured environment. 

Interests. Where two people who may be 
called developed have only one interest in 
common, they will inevitably tire of each 
other. For example : The man loves business, 
politics, theaters and cabarets. The wife, in 
addition to her home and her children, loves 
art, music, and higher thought. He is bored 
by art, music, and thought. She is bored by 
business details and politics. She occasionally 
enjoys the theater but detests cabarets. Their 
only meeting ground of common interest is — 
sex. And even their sex interest is not wholly 
in common because they each approach it from 
widely differing points of view ; he entirely from 
the material, she more from the aesthetic and 
spiritual. So neither really satisfies the other in 
the only common interest they had when they, 
began their married life, and when that interest 
ceases to be mutual, they begin to realize the 
dreary fact that although wedded for life they 
are far apart as the Poles. More is said on this 
subject in the chapter on Variety of Interests. 

24 



PERMANENT INCOMPATIBILITIES 

Economic Stress. Continuous and severe 
economic stress may become a complete 
barrier against love and romance. Such stress 
means crowding in uncomfortable rooms, lack 
of personal privacy and reserve, double beds, 
treading on each other's feet, sordid economy, 
no diversions, and no getting away from each 
other. No matter how strong a love may be 
at first, it cannot hold indefinitely against that 
constant and sordid bombardment. Long 
continued physical pain upsets the equilibrium 
of body and nervous systems, and centers the 
consciousness in one desire — to get rid of the 
pain at whatever sacrifice. Long continued 
psychical pain acts similarly, not only inter- 
fering with bodily functions, but by bringing 
profound weariness and disgust it disorganizes 
the emotional nattu'e, chokes out higher 
thought and aspiration, and leaves only the 
despairing hope of some day and somehow 
escaping from the ''slough of despond" which 
marriage has become. I will say more on 
Economic Stress in the chapter on that subject. 



25 



CHAPTER III 

THE SEXUAL CYCLE 

One of the most important single facts bearing 
on the marriage problem is the recent dis- 
covery by Doctor Marie Carmichael Stopes of 
London of the Sexual Cycle in Women. 
Restatement may be a better word than dis- 
covery, for the sexual cycle has been vaguely 
surmised for a long time. A correct under- 
standing of it, by men at least, is essential to 
the happiness of many people. Hereafter sex 
education should include instruction in regard 
to this cycle. After marriage it is even more 
important that the man should understand 
the cycle than the woman. This will be self- 
evident when the problem is explained. I 
regret that as a citizen of the United States, 
I am prevented from recommending, or even 
naming, Dr. Stopes' book, as under Section 21 1 

26 



THE SEXUAL CYCLE 

of the Criminal Code it is excluded from the 
U. S. Mails. 

First of all, Dr. Stopes disposes of the fallacy 
believed in by many that the menstrual period 
is a time of sexual activity or desire. On the 
contrary it is usually the reverse of this, the 
nadir point, in which the sexual tide is at low- 
est ebb. Before and afterwards there occur 
two periods or phases, one very definite, the 
other often less so, during which the sexual 
tide, or creative impulse, rises and reaches 
its maximum. Dr. Stopes' charts show that 
these two positive phases occtir at practically 
fortnightly intervals, with the menstrual or 
negative phase about midway between them. 

Now will be obvious the value of this know- 
ledge to husbands, though not necessarily so 
to wives. Men who understand and who are 
sufficiently tmselfish and self-controlled to 
restrain themselves until each fortnightly 
phase comes around will usually find their 
reward in the ideal responses they will receive 
during the three or four days of each positive 
phase. Without this knowledge it is easy to 

27 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

see why disappointment and misunderstanding 
so often come. 

Although the foregoing may be taken as a 
general rule, the duration of the periods of 
desire or responsiveness vary widely in differ- 
ent women, and in many it excepts only the 
time of menstruation. There is still another 
exception, however. In occasional women the 
sexual high tide is synchronous with menstrua- 
tion, and consequently they are then most 
fascinating and magnetic. Men who truly 
love their wives will study them and learn the 
signs of the phases of their cycles. They are 
plain enough to any lover, — as plain as the red 
or white rose which are said to have been the 
symbols worn by Camille. 

Knowledge of the sexual cycle will often 
have a protective value to women, before and 
after marriage. The whole question of ''psy- 
chological moments" ttu'ns largely around the 
pivotal points of the sexual cycle. An attrac- 
tive woman, while at the negative point of the 
cycle, might be introduced to a man agreeable 
and interesting. His manly qualities might I 

28 



THE SEXUAL CYCLE 

make little impression on her at the time, be- 
cause she was not then in a mood to feel mascu- 
line attraction. Also, being in her negative 
phase, she would not appear or act at her best, 
and could not radiate enough magnetism to 
particularly attract the sex interest of the man. 
Hence this meeting would not be likely to 
produce much mutual impression. But in- 
stead let the same two meet about twelve days 
later. The woman would then be at one of the 
positive phases of the sexual cycle. She would 
be animated, radiant, magnetic, and '^at her 
best.'' The man would immediately be at- 
tracted, and the woman would enjoy the im- 
pression she had made. Such a meeting might 
easily lead to love, engagement, courtship, and 
marriage. 

Much that passes for love at first sight de- 
pends on the phases of the female sexual cycle. 
Surely a more reasonable and attractive theory 
than the gross conception of some psycho- 
analysts, which is that love at first sight is 
merely the instant recognition by each in the 
other of the parent fixation type or incest 

29 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

complex ! Disregarding that theory except as 
it may apply to abnormal personalities, there 
are at least five hypotheses to account for love 
at first sight : 

1 . The meeting of a man and woman coin- 
ciding with one of the positive phases of her 
sexual cycle. 

2. A response evoked by mutual beauty, 
or the mutual possession of the fetiches which 
appeal to each. 

3. Sympathetic vibration, or the synchron- 
ous adjustment of both personalities, analo- 
gous to the responsive vibration of two tuning 
forks keyed to the same pitch. Looking 
farther backward, this may be due to 

4. Mutual intuitive recognition of an old 
love tie from a former life. I would remind 
readers to whom this statement may appear 
fantastic, that belief in Reincarnation is almost 
general throughout the Orient, including men 
of the highest intellectual attainment. Fur- 
thermore, apart from personal memories of 
many persons which are not necessarily evi- 
dence for others, there is now available the 

30 



THE SEXUAL CYCLE 

record of some exceedingly interesting research 
work done with subjects in deep hypnotic 
trance, in which personal consciousness was 
carried back through infancy and beyond until 
other personalities and names were reached; 
and, above all in importance, certain alleged 
revelations from former lives have apparently 
been corroborated by docimientary evidence. 
Consult Les Vies Successives, by A. De Rochas, 
Chacomac Freres, Paris. 

5. Astronomical correspondences at their 
respective birth times. Many years ago an 
original study of some of the famous affinities 
of history was made from this standpoint by 
the late Richard Garnett, Librarian of the 
British Museimi. His data are correct, and 
the correspondences and deductions are clear 
to anyone able to follow them astronomically. 
While the subject is rather too complicated to 
be explained in a paragraph, some idea of it 
may be conveyed by saying that the most 
frequent correspondences noted in cases of 
great and durable love were interchanges of 
the positions of the Sim and Moon at birth. 

31 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

Consult The Soul and the Stars, by A. G. 
Trent (Richard Garnett, University Magazine, 
March, 1880). Also the review, Nature, Vol. 
50, 1894. 

Resximing the consideration of the sexual 
cycle in women, it is during the positive phases 
that everything has a significance not noticed 
before; the flashing glances, the electric 
touches, the rhythm, music and intimate con- 
tact in dancing. For the time-being nothing 
coimts but the mutual glamour of sex differ- 
ence. The heart is rife with the joy of life, 
and the entire personality is irradiated as with 
a divine fire. 

For the time being, it would be impossible 
to know whether the two had any other fields 
of common or mutual interest. These could 
only be discovered and known with certainty 
during the negative phases of the cycle, when 
the veil of passional illusion had somewhat 
thinned, and consideration of impersonal 
things became possible. 

Natures that are sensitive and trained to 
know the beautiful wherever present, can 

32 



THE SEXUAL CYCLE 

recognize the essential elements of what means 
beauty to them independently of sexual cycles 
or other things. Many a doctor or nurse has 
found their great romances at sick beds, where 
the one beloved, or to be loved, was aesthet- 
ically at his or her worst, and perhaps continu- 
ing so for many days or weeks. Propinquity 
and pity nattirally may have figured somewhat 
here; also, it is well recognized that we are 
prone to love those whom we have helped or 
nursed or saved from danger. But I am in- 
clined to believe that propinquity, pity, and 
service operate mainly in that they bring 
about intimacies which discover the fields of 
mutual interest that are open to a given pair. 
Not by any means every couple, or the ma- 
jority of couples, brought thus into intimate 
association, develop a sex interest strong 
enough or enduring enough to cause them to 
seek marriage. We are apt to base our 
conclusions on a few and perhaps conspicuous 
cases in our own circle of friends. In the same 
incompetent way many people carelessly and 
recklessly repeat the statement that clergy- 
3 * 33 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

men's sons always become gamblers or drtmk- 
ards: While the facts are that a very few 
clergymen's sons have led wild lives, and 
because of the glaring contrast of their lives 
with the profession of their fathers, their par- 
ticular antics attracted rather more attention 
than they could possibly have done if their 
fathers had not been clergymen. 

It is safe to say that the marriages of aver- 
age yoimg men and women are made mostly 
from motives of sex glamour, initiated at the 
psychological moments of the cycles of the 
women. Not having been considered from any 
other standpoint than the sexual, we are apt, 
at first thought, to regard such marriages as I 
ill-considered. But are we necessarily right 
in that view? Average young people are not 
very intellectual, artistic, musical, or otherwise 
gifted. They are creatures of strong impulses, 
desires, appetites, and emotions. Any average 
young man and any average young woman, 
given health and reasonable attractiveness, 
should be about as suitable to each other as 
to any others of like natural equipment. The 

34 



THE SEXUAL CYCLE 

primal ptirposes of Nature are the carrying on 
of the Hfe, and the character evolution people 
acquire by the discipline of living together. 
Is it then, a very vital matter whether a given 
normal young man marries this or that normal 
young woman, or vice versa? 

The question of fine discrimination in the 
selection of the mate becomes important and 
vital only to men and women of developed 
mental and emotional natures, of intellectual 
and artistic culttire. With them it is most 
important that they are not drawn by tem- 
porary sex glamour into unions with persons 
who cannot commune with them in other 
fields besides that of sex. Consequently it 
should be of very great practical value to them 
to know the facts about the female sexual 
cycle. Such knowledge would cause many a 
look before leaping into marriage. The '* psy- 
chological moments'' and ''the time, the place 
and the girl,'' are well enough to make the 
marriages of the undeveloped and imcultured. 
But others should be more cautious, and 
though enjoying such ''moments" with a 

35 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

vividness and exaltation far beyond the com- 
prehension of less developed individuals, the 
wonderful first impressions should always be 
checked by later and fuller acquaintance, and 
by the finding of an enduring foundation of 
diversified mutual interests. 

While knowledge of the sexual cycle in 
women is all important in many cases, it is 
practically useless unless one other detail is 
remembered. All authorities agree that wo- 
men are generally slower to arrive at the 
culmination of sexual union than men. That 
moment should coincide with both, otherwise 
there is no true reciprocal union. In every 
such instance the woman is left stirred 
but not satisfied. In the united opinion of 
gynecologists and psychoanalysts those un- 
satisfactory unions for women are the causes 
of most cases of uterine congestion and many 
of hysteria and neuroses. It is therefore 
strictly up to husbands who love their wives, 
and to men expecting to marry, to bear in 
mind this very important consideration and 
to act accordingly. 

36 



THE SEXUAL CYCLE 

Birth Control. While it is not intended to 
discuss in any detail the subject of birth con- 
trol in this book, a brief reference to it should 
be made on account of its bearing on married 
happiness. Broadly speaking, the association 
of the sexes has two objects, (i) the carrying 
on of the racial life, and (2) the character 
development and spiritual evolution. Both 
objects are co-equal in importance. The 
advent of a child is the most dramatic incident 
of marriage, and its subsequent influence on 
the emotional nattrres of the parents is pro- 
found and lasting — or should be. 

When the Earth was yotmg, and life more 
natural, and himian problems more simple, 
the matter of human reproduction could well 
be left to itself. But all that has changed. 
Amid the present-day economic stress, the 
resultant less vigorous health of modem 
woman, and the almost universal education in 
advanced nations, the incidence of children 
into families should no longer be left entirely^ 
to chance or to psychological moments, — at 
least for developed people. 

37 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

Economically speaking, if a pair cannot 
properly bring up more than, say, two chil- 
dren, it is obviously not right for them to have 
more. From the standpoint of health, if a 
modern highly organized and sensitive woman 
cannot bear more than, say, two children, or 
even one, without harm to her continued 
efficiency, she should not do so or be forced to 
do so. 

Again, from the standpoint of character and 
ethics there is an immense difference between 
(i) the man and woman who, with knowledge 
and the power of choice, deliberately take on 
themselves the sacred obligation of parent- 
hood and the considerable mutual sacrifice 
it will carry with it; and (2) the man and 
woman who know nothing and care for nothing 
but the sensations derived from moments of 
sex passion, and to whom children come as 
mere accidents and are often unwelcome. 

I have observed that persons of the first 
type, those who deliberately and nobly and 
with dignity have become parents, retain for 
each other an affection which time only 

38 



THE SEXUAL CYCLE 

strengthens; while those of the second type 
often develop more and more mutual irrita- 
tion and loss of respect. The man is irration- 
ally irritated with his wife for becoming preg- 
nant so often and thus interfering with his ' 
pleasure and '* rights." The wife is irritated 
with the man as being the selfish cause of her 
troubles and for making her a household 
drudge. Forttmately, however, the develop- 
ment of the parental instincts somewhat re- 
deem the sordid situation as the children grow 
up around them. 

Before the World War the Continental 
Etiropean ideal of national grandeur embodied 
the idea of immense families, especially among 
the lower classes, to furnish millions of men 
for military service and for slaughter. The 
Church teaches the same, not for military 
puposes but to spread its religion and 
strengthen its organization. 

The new and saner ideal substitutes con- 
struction and conservation for destruction and 
waste, and therefore finds no further need for 
the propagation of htmian beings on the 

39 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

guinea pig scale. Instead, it teaches fewer 
children and better children and a more 
developed humanity. Says Havelock Ellis 
in a recently published article: 

The production of children is not so urgent a matter 
today as it was in those legendary days when Noah 
emerged from the door of the Ark onto an empty world. 
In fact the urgency is now the other way, and the next 
flood to overwhelm and ruin the earth is far more 
likely to be of babies than of waters. The only chil- 
dren the earth needs now are those who are worth 
something to it, and for the production of children 
who are really worth while there are wanted parents 
who are fitted both by their natural hereditary quali- 
ties and their special training for the noble task of 
creating the future race. 

Reactionary influences are still too strong, 
however, and the majority of the people as 
yet too undeveloped to profit much by such 
teaching. But to those who give it intelligent 
thought, the matter of discriminating birth 
control is one of the most vitally important 
considerations for the immediate future. 



40 



CHAPTER IV 

PERSONAL HYGIENE 

David Graham Phillips, in Old Wives for 
New, tells how Sophy, the once beautiful girl 
and bride, has degenerated into a careless, fat, 
sloppy wife. She realizes that she seldom 
bathes now, and that her hair has not been 
washed for months, and that her one-time 
beautiful body is growing always more fat 
and shapeless. But she excuses herself by 
remembering that that hair and that bosom 
had served their purpose when they secured a 
husband and a home. So why trouble about 
them any more? The story then goes on to 
tell, and with amazing frankness for a work of 
fiction, how the wife and the — in that case — 
more sensitive husband occupied the conven- 
tional and. sacred double bed; how he became 
progressively more disgusted and even nause- 

41 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

ated by the odors from her unwashed body and 
the sour smell from her unwashed hair; and 
even, the author dares to say, of other odors 
whose sources he does not mention, but leaves 
to the reader to guess. At last, unable to 
endure it any longer, the husband comes to the 
(at that time) momentous decision to sleep in 
a separate bed. Eventually, of course, he 
meets another woman who has the personal 
beauty and charm and sweetness his wife once 
had, and inevitably turns to her. 

It is well known that all successful writers of 
fiction draw their most convincing material 
from life and experience. Therefore it is a 
foregone conclusion that Phillips did not draw 
on his imagination for all that detail about 
Sophy's deterioration, but instead that he had 
an actual case or cases in mind as he wrote. 
My own professional experience as the con- 
fidant of many unhappy people supports the 
latter view. And therefore I say, and as 
earnestly as I can, that it would be well if all 
married and engaged people read that book, 
as a warning against any latent tendency to 

42 



PERSONAL HYGIENE 



relax in their efforts to appear always at their 
very best when in each other's presence. 
Here, then, is one source of trouble in marriage 
which is very real, more common than one 
would think possible among cultured people, 
and — entirely preventable. 

It is not pleasant to write this chapter. But 
to ignore personal hygiene in this book would 
be to assume an attitude of aesthetic prudery, 
a kind of Freudian repression, comparable 
with that of the sexual prudery of our ances- 
tors towards sex facts, which was responsible 
for the age of */fig leaf morality'' as Fielding 
calls it, now, happily, in process of senile 
degeneration. At first thought, however, it 
certainly does seem unnecessary to discuss the 
crude and obvious details of personal hygiene 
in a book which is addressed only to people 
having culture, refinement, and aesthetic 
sense. And yet the experience of physicians 
agrees that there are numerous instances of 
remarkable obtuseness and negligence among 
people of social position and education who 
apparently have refinement. 

43 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

The higher we go in the scale of evolution, 
the more frequently we find people of extreme 
delicacy and sensitiveness towards certain 
physical things. Such sensitiveness is capable 
of being stimulated to feel either intense 
pleasure or intense disgust. This is notably 
true as to odors. Thus a finely organized man 
or woman may keenly enjoy a delicate per- 
ftrnie, or be affected almost to nausea by some 
slightly disagreeable odor that another person 
would be hardly or not even aware of. 

First, then, as to odors. Some writer has 
said: ''Love begins at the nose." There is a 
crudely material aspect of that which we need 
not go into here. But apart from that it is an 
accepted fact that the attractiveness of a 
woman may be enhanced or diminished by the 
perfimies she uses or does not use. Or the 
natural faint perf imie emanating from a scrupu- 
lously clean body or head of hair may be 
thought by some as more attractive than any 
artificial perfume. Then as to breath. A 
pure healthful breath is almost odorless, and 
even pleasant, at any rate to a lover. The 

44 






PERSONAL HYGIENE 

operatic hero sings : ' ' Thy breath as incense 
sweet." To recapitiilate, the natural odors of 
a clean body and a pure breath are not un- 
pleasant, and may even be thought agreeable 
where people love each other. In friendship 
and courtship between a man and woman they 
always deliberately try to appear before each 
other as agreeably as possible and in every 
way ; of course bathing and general spruceness 
are the rule. 

After marriage, however, as part of the 
deterioration complex in conduct, there is apt 
to come a tendency to slack off somewhat in 
personal appearance and hygiene. A man will 
sometimes omit his morning shave and bath, 
or even neglect to brush his teeth at night. A 
woman may neglect not only her daily bath 
but leave her hair unwashed for a long time, 
until it begins to smell mouldy or mousey. 
One or both may neglect their teeth or diges- 
tion until bad breath results; and then they 
are on dangerous ground. 

As already said, many a man or woman is 
acutely sensitive to odors, and especially to 

45 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

disagreeable personal ones. When such a man 
or woman notices an offensive odor from the 
person of the one admired or beloved, it comes 
as a real shock and inspires a feeling almost of 
revulsion, and that feeling of revulsion may be 
hard to overcome or to forget. Such experi- 
ences are rare, or indeed they never occur, to a 
pair of loverSj not because of blind love, but 
because in that stage of their association 
they think about making themselves 
personally attractive and magnetic, and they 
take especial pains to do so. It is only after 
marriage that vigilance is relaxed and personal 
appearance and cleanlimess and breath are 
neglected. 

Speaking very practically, the daily bath 
should be a matter of inflexible routine. More 
than that, it should be regarded as a duty, as a 
religious duty. If conditions of crowding or of 
cold make a complete bath difficult or unwise, 
then a partial daily bath will usually suffice to 
prevent disagreeable odors. The Italians of 
the better class are distinctly ahead of us in 
certain sanitary plumbing which makes this 

46 



PERSONAL HYGIENE 

kind of personal hygiene easy and pleasant. 
Every bathroom is equipped with a kind of 
miniature tub so shaped that one can sit over 
and astride of it. There are hot and cold 
water taps, and an agreeable cleansing partial 
bath can be taken without undressing, which 
is satisfactory for the purposes of this chapter. 
The same apparatus can serve also for a foot 
bath. 

The matter of bad breath is so vitally im- 
portant in marriage that it must be taken up 
in some detail. Bad breath may come from at 
least six causes : ( i ) Teeth decayed or affected 
with pyorrhoea alveolaris. (2) Constipation. 
(3) Diseased tonsils or adenoids. (4) Ozaena, 
a chronic nasal disease. (5) Chronic gastritis. 
(6) The food eaten, as onions or garlic. All of 
those conditions will respond, most of them 
completely, to medical or surgical treatment. 
Pyorrhoea is the most obstinate and probably 
is not so much a local disease as a symptom of 
a constitutional condition. It has been known 
to disappear tmder treatment internally with 
a French preparation of colloidal iodine. 

47 



L 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

Generally speaking, bad breath is evidence of 
neglect of personal hygiene, such as dentistry 
and laxatives, or better, correct diet. Tooth 
brushes, dental floss, and cascara are always 
and easily available. The eating of onions or 
garlic by one partner when the other detests 
the resulting reek of the breath is simply 
hopeless, and a person so selfish or obtuse as 
to do that could hardly be expected to benefit 
by advice from any source. 

The care of the feet is next in order, and 
very important. Many people's feet perspire, 
and sometimes they have an odor. Being used 
to the odor themselves, they do not realize how 
vilely disgusting it is to other people. Often 
in a theater one will see a man get up and speak 
to the usher, and then he and his companion 
are shown to other seats ; someone near them 
had ' ' f eet . ' ' It would be cruel to call attention 
to such an affliction if it were not easily cur- 
able. Moderate cases of perspiring feet can 
be controlled by frequent bathing and liberal 
use of scented boro-talcum powder. Severe 
cases with bad odor can be cured by taking a 

48 



PERSONAL HYGIENE 

teaspoonful of powdered sulphur morning and 
evening for from one to two weeks. Of course 
the sulphur should be taken in something like 
syrup or molasses, otherwise it will stick be- 
tween the teeth and be rather hard to wash 
down. Probably it is not necessary to say 
that the taking of the sulphur internally 
should be supplemented by a daily foot bath 
and use of powder. In stmi, the daily foot 
bath should be thought of and practiced as a 
sacred duty. 

Excessive perspiration imder the arms used 
to be a very annoying limitation to many 
attractive people . One remembers with horror 
the ugly and obvious dress shields women were 
formerly compelled to wear. But Science, the 
servant of Necessity, came to the rescue and 
solved the vexatious problem. Preparations 
which prevent perspiring under the arms are 
now on sale in all drug stores, and there is no 
longer any excuse for enduring or obtruding 
on others that infirmity. A recent and clever 
magazine advertisement gave a picture of a 
ballroom showing two women in evening 
4 49 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

gowns standing a little apart from the others 
and conversing about a third woman who was 
sitting alone in a corner and looking wistfully 
at the dancers. One of the two women asked 
the other why Miss — — was so seldom asked to 
dance. The other replied that it was because 
''the poor thing suffers so from perspiration.'' 
Now advertisements, like jests, sometimes 
speak the truth. This one would never have 
been written by a psychologist, designed by a 
highly paid artist, and published at the cost 
of some $4,000 for one Saturday issue, if it 
had not been well known that it applied em- 
phatically and unromantically to very many 
women. The disagreeable fact of the exces- 
sive perspiration itself is of course made worse 
by the rank odor that goes with it. This and 
other impleasant physiological odors are abom- 
inations which have no place with beauty and 
with love. If it is sometimes true, as has been 
said, that ''Love begins at the nose,'' it is 
probably also true that in some cases love 
ends at the nose. 

The hygiene of menstruation is very impor- 

50 



PERSONAL HYGIENE 

tant in marriage, especially if the husband 
happens to be somewhat over-sensitive and 
fastidious. To understand this clearly let us 
take a glance at first principles. Menstrua- 
tion is one of the great cyclic rhythms of 
Nature, and one of its purposes seems to be to 
assure the woman — the future mother — of 
definite periods during which she will be pro- 
tected from sexual advances. This being 
admitted, it follows that one of Nature's 
protective measiu-es at that time is to make 
woman less attractive to man than that at 
other times. Consequently there is not only 
the unpleasant feature of the menstrual flow 
itself, but also the accompaniment of an un- 
pleasant odor. An innately sensitive woman 
realizes this, and though frankly admitting 
her condition she takes care, by means of 
scrupulous cleanliness and perftmies, not to 
obtrude it on her husband. During this of all 
times it is advisable to occupy separate beds. 
Yet many women seem to fail to sense the 
essential unattractiveness of the menstrual 
condition and allow it to become obvious. The 

51 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

carelessness of some women otherwise sensi- 
tive is hard to understand at those times. 
At the shrine of the medical confessional men 
have told of their annoyance at such careless- 
ness. Surgeons in the Atlantic passenger 
service have considerable professional experi- 
ence with women of the higher social levels. 
Some of those surgeons have reported many 
instances of gross carelessness and uncleanli- 
ness among such women during menstruation; 
as using steamer towels, and leaving them, just 
as they were, in their berths or on cabin 
floors, or rolled up under their pillows. 

Balzac was a profound psychologist and 
observer of personal relationships. Nothing 
escaped him. He portrayed life as he saw it, 
with the skill of a master and the frankness of 
a Frenchman. In his Deux Jeunes Mariees 
is his picture of the mistress who, with the 
finesse and consimimate tact of the French- 
woman in these matters, rose every morning 
at dawn, bathed, and, completely refreshed, 
slipped back beside her lover, to greet him, 
fresh as a rose, when he awoke. Such a strenu- 

52 



PERSONAL HYGIENE 

ous routine might become irksome as a steady 
thing, but the idea is based on sound sense. 
In the ultimate psychology of sex the woman 
must always attract the man, and if she desires 
to hold him she must maintain her personal 
attractiveness. Unfair, perhaps, but true. 

Referring again to odors, there are several 
things that man also should not forget. Men 
wear heavier clothing than women, and there- 
fore they perspire more, especially tmder the 
arms and about the genitalia, and their under- 
wear soon becomes sweat soaked. If not fre- 
quently changed it quickly emanates rank 
odors. Sensitive women say that the odor 
from men's underwear is generally stronger 
and more disagreeable than from women's, 
and that even after laundering the odor re- 
mains, and is noticed particularly when being 
ironed. 

Tailors are now recommending for men the 
use of preparations to check perspiration 
tmder the arms. For other parts of the body 
the difficulty is relieved by frequent bathing. 
The Hindus also wear a triangular piece of 

53 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

cloth, changed daily, which takes up prac- 
tically all perspiration and other secretions 
and keeps that part of the underwear clean 
and without odors. This simple device is 
described in an interesting and helpful booklet 
entitled Continence and Sexual Hygiene, by 
Pramatha Nath Dey. 

All married men should seriously remember 
that sensitive women suffer tortures when vile 
personal odors are obtruded on them. One of 
the quickest and surest ways to disgust such 
women and to alienate their affection and sex 
interest is for men to be careless in the matters 
just dealt with. It would be a wholesome 
reminder to many careless men if some able 
woman would write a gripping novel on the 
sins of men in this respect, corresponding to 
David Graham Phillips' book Old Wives for 
New. Cleanliness has been recognized as a 
supreme virtue from time immemorial. One 
simply cannot imagine purity or decency that 
is not associated with it. In fact as in senti- 
ment, ''Cleanliness is next to Godliness." 

Negligence or slacking in attention to per- 

54 



PERSONAL HYGIENE 

sonal attractiveness is therefore one of the 
causes for a development of indifference, or 
worse, by one partner. And the commonest 
and worst aspect of such negHgence is lack 
of attention to personal cleanliness. Regret- 
table and most unromantic as it is to say so, 
this impardonable sin against love appears to 
be as common among women as with men. 
This is not alone the verdict of men but also of 
women. Let me quote one of them, an artist 
friend : 

I am often surprised as well as disgusted when stand- 
ing or sitting by well dressed and refined looking young 
women to notice the disagreeable odors that come 
from them — odors that come from lack of bathing and 
nothing else. And then I feel like saying to them, ' ' Are 
you married? Does any man have to live with you?'* 

When such a careless and dense person 
marries a sensitive one, that one is quickly 
disgusted, and the first effect of the disgust is 
to render him or her cold and unresponsive, 
or even sexually impotent or frigid towards the 
mate. Such a situation makes a true psychic 
tratmia in their imion which may be impossible 

55 



i 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

to recover from. It cannot be offset by super- 
ior mentality or noble character. Further- 
more, the situation may be hopeless for two 
fundamental reasons: (i) Because the mate, 
in spite of the possession of noble qualities 
and fine abilities, is somewhat deficient in 
intuition, and that being so, might be incap- 
able of appreciating what would appear as the 
other's imreasonable over-sensitiveness and 
finickiness. (2) The offended one, as a rule, 
would not tell the other the true reason for 
his or her coldness. A strong inner reluctance 
would make them almost tongue-tied about 
discussing such a matter together. For one 
thing, they would feel sure that to speak of it 
would hurt the pride and wound the feelings 
of the other, and of course they would shrink 
from doing that . Moreover, they might reason , 
if analytically inclined, that anyone however 
estimable otherwise who had to be told of some 
entirely preventable uncleanliness and smelli- 
ness of their body might be too aesthetically 
dense to profit by the information. Anyway, 
they would finally conclude, the mere telling 

56 



PERSONAL HYGIENE 

of it would be so damnably disagreeable that 
they would prefer to keep silent until perhaps 
he or she learned through some other source 
than themselves. 

Such an impasse between a man and wife is 
bad, but not hopeless, provided that the offend- 
ing wife or offending husband can be made to 
realize that the other's point of view is really 
and essentially vital to that one, though it 
may seem exaggerated or fantastic to them- 
selves. And when that realization has come, 
and if he or she has sufficient tmselfish love 
and adaptability to impel a change of habits 
and the institution of a routine daily practice 
which will correct the offending factor; then, 
and only then, may a new start be made, and 
with more than a fighting chance of success. 
But after that there must be no more slacking. 
The psychic trauma may indeed be healed, but 
deep down in the Unconscious or Subconscious 
the record is stored away, and if the old dis- 
cords are again struck, the old wound may 
reopen. 

The following question was recently put to 

57 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

all married women through the meditmi of a 
full-page advertisement on the back cover of a 
famous magazine : 

Would your husband marry you again? . . . 
Fortunate is the woman who can answer **Yes.'' 
But many a woman, if she is honest with herself, is 
forced to be in doubt — after that she pays stricter 
attention to her personal attractions. 

The words were accompanied by a colored 
picture of a t^te-^-t^te between two society 
people, the woman wearing a modern backless 
gown which displayed her radiant skin from 
neck nearly to waist. The writer, psycholo- 
gist, artist, and business man who collabo- 
rated in assembling that advertisement had no 
higher purpose than to sell soap. As with the 
other advertisement quoted earlier in this 
chapter, the business man who paid the 
enormously high price demanded for it knew 
that he was making a paying investment by 
playing on the uneasy fears of numberless 
women who had neglected their skins after 
marriage ; and he knew also that the question 
he asked was one which many married men 

58 



I 



PERSONAL HYGIENE 

have asked themselves, and some have an- 
swered ''No/' 

On the other hand, many men might well 
reverse the question and ask themselves if 
their wives would marry them again? Yet the 
supreme egotism of Man would make it im- 
likely that men ever ask themselves this ques- 
tion. Their assurance is the heritage of Ages 
of male dominance and supposed superiority 
over women, and it dies hard. The men who 
neglect their teeth, their feet, their manners, 
who smoke stinking pipes at home, and who 
after marriage discard all the little courtesies 
and lover-like attentions that mean so much 
to every woman: what women who deserve 
equal suffrage would marry such men again? 

Enough on this subject. If more stress has 
been laid on negligence of women than of men, 
it is not because men are less culpable but 
because Nature itself imposes peculiar power 
and responsibilities on women which are self- 
evident. Woman is the sustainer of the home, 
of the family, and of man's inspiration. Hold- 
ing such a high place in the scheme of evolu- 

59 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

tion, Woman involuntarily occupies a pedestal, 
not only in the eyes and hearts of men, but in 
fact. And like all who are on pedestals, any 
lapses of hers in what is truly her own King- 
dom are more conspicuous and far-reaching 
than the lapses of men. 



60 



CHAPTER V 

CHRONIC IRRITATION 

Offense to the sense of sight is next in order. 
The neglected shave and unbrushed teeth are 
early danger signals. So are slovenliness and 
dowdiness in dress. Most details of personal 
hygiene should be done in as much privacy as 
possible. This should be one of the strictest 
rules of marriage. True modesty is essential 
to the preservation of mutual romantic inter- 
est. And yet modesty has no concern with 
clothing or with nudity. The sight of a beauti- 
ful body is always ennobling. 

A human form is divinity in flesh and blood. A 
well-developed man is a splendid spectacle worth the 
sight. Every feature of his body, in its bareness, 
commands the admiration of both sexes. . . . Glor- 
ious is woman's figure, an image of living grace and 
elegance. A nude beauty charms the intellect and 

6i 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

stifles the passions. Her sanctifying appearance 
elevates the spectator to a high plane of existence.^ 

Modesty, therefore, is a personal or rather 
individual mode of self-expression, difficult to 
define, a subtle blending of delicacy and sweet- 
ness, of sincerity and refinement, an exquisite 
and innate understanding of the fitness of 
things and of conduct. 

The sense of sight in some people may be 
offended by general carelessness in dress, or by 
specific acts, such as going about the house in 
deshabille ; or by wearing some old and untidy 
garment, as a faded or frayed out bathrobe or 
kimono, or an old pair of bedroom slippers. 
Some women cannot endure seeing their hus- 
bands in shirt sleeves. Other women do not 
mind shirt sleeves, but they draw the line at 
suspenders. 

A man may not like to see his wife's hair 
mussed up or tousled or in curl papers. Or he 
may demand that she be always dressed ac- 
cording to what he considers the mode. Thus 
he would insist on tight corsets, forty-five 

' Pramatha Nath Dey in Continence and Sexual Hygiene. 

62 



CHRONIC IRRITATION 

degree heels, bare arms and ftirs at 98 in the 
shade, long kid gloves, and so forth; all non- 
essentials at their best, some bad, some 
bad-looking, some only stupid, all of them 
tmcomfortable, and all unheautiful to natural 
and artistic eye^. 

The problem is not solved, however, by 
saying that artificial ideals of dress or manners 
are tmreasonable or selfish or non-essential. 
Of coturse they are, more or less. But the fact 
often remains that they have become actual 
necessities, albeit artificial ones, through early 
training and environment. They are inextric- 
ably boimd up with the personal expression 
and reaction, and however irrational or tyran- 
nical they may be — there they are. 

It may be senseless or even cruel for a wife 
to demand that her husband wear a coat or 
tuxedo at home when they are dining alone 
together on a hot night. And yet if her train- 
ing from infancy has established a fixation 
which interprets shirt sleeves at table as vul- 
garity, her involimtary reaction to such ''vul- 
garity'' at her table would be similar to the 

63 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

reaction of a more naturally trained personal- 
ity at some exhibition of what meant vulgarity 
to him or her; say, drunkenness at table, spit- 
ting on the floor, or chewing tobacco in church. 

In sum, the feelings of an artificially trained 
man or woman may be as much outraged by a 
breach of social etiquette, as those of a natur- 
ally trained man or woman would be at dis- 
plays of actual vulgarity. 

In these days when American women have 
learned to smoke after the Continental custom, 
smoking by men has no longer its exclusive 
significance. But there remains one form of 
male smoking that should not be passed over. 
Some men enjoy pipes. Pipes always impart 
a stale and persistently disagreeable odor to a 
room and its contents, and the odor is at once 
perceived by all who are not pipe users. Some 
women do not mind pipes, and in their cases 
there is nothing to be said. But more women 
detest pipes and only tolerate them because 
they have to. Excessive tobacco users always 
claim that smoking has no bad effects. And 
yet many men who smoke pipes smoke them 

64 



CHRONIC IRRITATION 

constantly at home notwithstanding the an- 
noyance to their wives! Such persistence at 
home in a habit which is objectionable to 
wives and daughters can only be interpreted 
as indifference to discomfort caused to others; 
and such a development is surely a bad effect 
from any habit ! 

This effect is evident in a lesser and more 
unconscious degree even with some cigar 
smokers. Many women still do not smoke, and 
some do not like the smell of tobacco. When 
men are calling at homes they have not visited 
before, or seldom visited, they often ask the 
hostess if they may smoke ? They have no idea 
of her tastes, but ask the permission anyway, 
knowing that she will grant it, either from a 
sense of hospitality, or because a refusal might 
offend. How many men who are otherwise 
gentlemen realize that when they make that 
request in a strange home they may be em- 
barrassing their hostess, particularly when the 
request means a pipe? The request is, in 
effect, a demand ! 

The frequent display of such callousness by 
5 65 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

cultured men seems to indicate that the exces- 
sive use of tobacco does tend to blunt one's 
sense of fitness, not to put it more strongly, 
''for it is the only habit which a gentleman 
will publicly indulge in when he knows it to be 
offensive to many/' 

There is, however, another aspect of exces- 
sive tobacco smoking. Pipe smoking at hoijie 
is sometimes the result of chronic irritation in 
the family life. In the modern psychoanalytic 
view all bad habits such as alcoholism, drug 
addiction, and excessive tobacco smoking or 
chewing, are more or less unconscious efforts 
to escape from irksome realities. All of them 
partially anaesthetize emotional responsive- 
ness and take the edge off chronic irritation; 
they make tiresome realities seem less tiresome 
by blurring one's perception of them. Some 
wives, tired out by economic or other stress, 
seek the nearest outlet for their pent-up irri- 
tation and anxiety, and nag their hus- 
bands almost continuously. The effects on 
husbands will depend on their essential 
natures. One type will tend to lose self-confi- 

66 



CHRONIC IRRITATION 

dence, to develop neurasthenia with second- 
ary disttirbances of digestion and nutrition, or 
to seek rehef in the excessive effects of tobacco 
which only pipes can give — good cigars being 
as a rule too expensive at that gait. Another 
type will react by being at home as little as 
possible and by finding solace with other 
women. 

The very worst way to meet domestic stress 
is with bad temper. People should do one 
thing or the other; either stay together and 
be good sports and make the best of it; or 
separate and give each another chance for 
happiness with someone else. At this point 
they would do well to ask themselves the ques- 
tion put by a priest to a confidant in Basil 
King's The Lifted F^i/,— '' When you married 
Leslie was it primarily to be a good wife to 
him, or to get a good husband for yourself?'* 
In other words. Did |you marry to love or to 
be loved? 

Another rather frequent source of irritation 
is where one may be a fresh-air fiend, and the 
other — normal. Fresh air addicts think they 

67 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

must have it even with wind, rain, snow, or 
hail. With such couples the double bed, or 
even the same bedroom, becomes either a 
battleground or — for one — a place of torment. 
With some couples one may like two blankets, 
and the other only one. In those cases the 
former is usually quite certain that the latter's 
health is being ruined by two blankets. In 
these and in similar instances people should try 
to realize that marked desires for such things 
as fresh air or still air, or light or heavy cover- 
ing, usually indicate actual bodily needs, and 
that for one to insist that the other follow his 
practice is unreasonable and cruel, and may 
even be harmful to that one. When there are 
such differences in physical temperaments the 
only sane and fair rule is to live and let live, 
which means with married people separate 
beds or separate rooms and no arguments. 

One has to live several years in Continental 
Europe to learn that our American ideas about 
fresh air in sleeping rooms need revision. I 
have seen family after family of well-nourished, 
intelligent and beautiful children who sleep, 

68 




CHRONIC IRRITATION 

even in summer, in tightly closed rooms. By 
oiir rules such children should be inferiors, 
but they are not. Results are more convincing 
than theories, and the facts are that Italian 
children compare favorably with American 
children in every way. This is medical heresy, 
but it is time that someone has the courage to 
say the truth. 

I do not wish these remarks to be under- 
stood as indorsing closed rooms and stale air 
for American children. What I do wish to 
emphasize is that the facts I have cited are 
true for Southern Italy. I believe that their 
sane consideration in America might serve to 
restrain the excessive and indiscriminate 
application of the fresh air idea to all alike by 
certain well insulated enthusiasts. 

A man may irritate a wife, say, by neglecting 
to have his trousers creased often enough. 
Indeed, I know of one case in which this 
neglect by a husband was f oimd by analysis to 
be the main factor in a neurosis in the wife. 
The correctness of the diagnosis was proved 
by the result of the treatment; namely, that 

69 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

after a friend and psychologist had put the 
husband wise he began to crease his trousers 
regularly, and the wife's neurosis disappeared. 

In another case a wealthy and talented man 
insisted on wearing a celluloid collar, even at 
prominent social affairs, notwithstanding the 
oft-expressed annoyance and mortification of 
his wife. This may have been the starting 
point of troubles that led later to their separa- 
tion. The man would not or could not change. 
Mutual irritation grew and grew, extending to 
other things, imtil at last it came to the point 
where he must decide between his wife and his 
celluloid collar. He decided for the collar. 

One might cite similar things ad libitum. 
Whatever they may be, they are one and all 
instances of small things that strike discordant 
notes in what should be the married harmony. 
The irritations caused by most of them do not 
spring so much from true expressions of 
personalities as from artificial views which are 
results of early training. Provided that the 
prime requisite of personal cleanliness and 
sweetness is observed, and both parties have 

70 



CHRONIC IRRITATION 

in some measure the virtues of unselfishness 
and adaptabiUty , and above all Love ; all such 
I mere educational habits should be easily com- 
promised — but not underestimated. 

And yet artificial ideals of what is right or 
nice or proper may be strong enough to build 
up impassable barriers to love expression. If 
: irritation in small things is kept up, sooner or 
[later it becomes chronic, and then it passes 
beyond the things themselves and into all 
j phases of the life together. An analogy from 
medicine will perhaps make this clearer. 
I Chronic irritation, kept up for a long time, is 
one of the recognized causes of cancer. Ex- 
amples are the almost continuous holding of a 
cigar or a pipe in one comer of the mouth; 
continuous irritation of the tongue by a car- 
ious tooth; the steady pressure of a badly 
made corset against a woman's breast. 

So may chronic irritation in marriage from 
some insignificant thing develop into a can- 
cer, a malignant growth which imdermines and 
later destroys the imion. The lesson which is 
shouted out by such deplorably common ex- 

71 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

perience is just this: That all wise and un- 
selfish husbands and wives should study each 
other's little idiosyncrasies, their peculiarly 
personal and seemingly irrational likes and 
dislikes, their fancies and phobias. These 
things often have deep root in the Un- 
conscious — in the so-called love-ideal . Sincere 
efforts should be made to avoid the little things 
which irritate, and to encourage those which 
please. In marriage more than anywhere else 
there must always be a cheerful readiness to 
give and take, to live not for one but for two. 
After unselfishness and common sense, the 
most essential virtue to be cultivated and lived 
up to in marriage is — Adaptability . 



72 



CHAPTER VI 

FATIGUE 

Fatigue, or lessening of energy output, of 
efficiency, of functioning power, is an universal 
property of matter, of instruments, of bodies, 
even of metals. It is just as inevitable as are 
any and all of the great alternating phases of 
nature. Fatigue and pain are the warnings of 
Nature, its safety valves, for the conservation 
of the vehicles of life. The law holds rigidly 
in all human experience. When we are tired 
physically we cannot work well or rapidly. 
When we are exhausted we cannot work at all. 
For pleasure and even for great joy the same 
law of alternation always obtains. The most 
gorgeous scenery, the most ideal human form, 
will tire any eyes, however artistic and appre- 
ciative, at the end of a whole day. The eyes 
need the repose which night and darkness 

73 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

bring. The most beautiful music cannot be 
endured for more than four or five hours by- 
even the most trained ears. The ear drimis 
lose their fine tension and elasticity, and the 
marvelously complex receiving instruments of 
the inner ears do not respond and coordinate 
as well. They have vibrated too long and need 
rest. Yet who would dare to say that the 
scenery, the himian form, and the music, in 
themselves, had become less beautiful because 
eyes and ears had lost the power to enjoy? 

The most passionate kiss, the most raptur- 
ous embrace, could not be conceived of as 
lasting indefinitely. They might be repeated 
many times but eventually a time would come 
with the most ardent lovers when mutual 
demonstrations of affection would have to 
cease. The intense desire for intimacy must 
in time give place to a desire for solitude and 
privacy. 

Aside from the demand of physical bodies for 
cessation and repose after every kind of exer- 
cise and experience, there is a deeper psy- 
chological urge for periods of solitude which 

74 



FATIGUE 

comes from what is called in psychoanalysis 
the Unconscious, but what Eastern psychology 
regards as the Ego or Higher Self. In the 
mechanism of the higher consciousness there is 
a process analogous to digestion and assimila- 
tion. In this higher process all experiences of 
desire, emotion, and thought are, as it were, 
brooded over by the Ego, and whatever is 
true and good and beautiful in them is assimi- 
lated or built into the soul as permanent incre- 
ments of will, faculty and character. To give 
a few illustrations : Every experience of per- 
sonal courage or heroism leaves a permanent 
gain to the will-aspect of the individual in 
courage, determination and initiative. Tre- 
mendous intellectual efforts, as those of New- 
ton and Einstein, permanently expand the 
cognitional or intelligence aspect of the individ- 
ual. Every great and transcendent experience 
of unselfish love causes a permanent expansion 
of the feeling-aspect of consciousness, with 
thereafter a greater capacity for unselfish love 
and devotion, and some improvement in the 
emotional nature all around. The same is 

75 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

essentially true of all experiences of ecstacy 
which come through religion, music, and art. 

Finally, the absolute need for periods of 
solitude, for meditation and self-examination, 
has been recognized from time immemorial by 
all religious orders and all other schools which 
have as their common object the development 
of spirituality, of character, and of personal 
power. 

The occurrence of temporary mutual loss of 
interest between people who love each other, 
or in other words emotional stagnation, has 
close analogies with two well-known electrical 
phenomena. The first is the familiar labora- 
tory experiment with pith balls suspended by 
threads near each other. When one of these 
bodies is positively electrified and the other 
negatively electrified they have mutual attrac- 
tion and move toward each other. The attrac- 
tion continues indefinitely if they remain near 
together but are prevented from touching. 
But when they do contact each other their 
different electricities are neutralized, mutual 
attraction ceases, and they fall apart. 

76 



FATIGUE 

Human analogies are obvious. A child has 
been with its mother all day. Towards the 
end of the day it becomes peevish and hard to 
amuse. When the father comes home in the 
evening the child runs to him for kisses and 
caresses. He clings to the father a little time, 
then gradually disengages himself and pres- 
ently is playing with his toys, or is back again 
with the mother. 

In this example, the mother and child had 
become saturated with each other's magnetism 
during the day. There was no more flow or 
current between them. They were mutually 
demagnetized. When the father returned 
home after a day of complete separation he 
was charged with magnetism of a different 
quality — at a different level, from that of the 
wife and child. Hence the automatic demon- 
stration of attraction as well as affection. 

Everyone knows, even though he may be 
reluctant to admit it, that there is generally 
more fervor, more thrill, in the kiss of welcome 
after an absence, than in the kiss of good-bye 
in the morning or some days since. 

77 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

The other electrical analogy is that of the 
polarized galvanic battery. The battery in its 
simplest form consists of two pieces of different 
metals immersed in an acid or saline solution, 
which acts chemically on one of the metals. 
The metal acted upon or corroded is called the 
positive electrode, and the other the negative 
electrode. When the two are connected by a 
wire an electric current is generated. The 
positive electrode is acted on by the solution, 
and though the negative electrode is not, its 
surface soon becomes covered with fine bubbles 
of hydrogen gas, which is a non-conductor. 
The current gets weaker and weaker, and at 
last ceases to flow. When the circuit is 
interrupted the bubbles of gas soon detach 
themselves from the surface of the negative 
electrode, and when the contact is again made, 
the current again flows. 

The human analogy occurs where two people 
have been continuously together for a long 
time. One of them has become polarized, 
insulated, and there is no more current flowing 
between them. Nothing remains but inertia 

78 



I 



FATIGUE 

and stagnation. Each is tired of the other — 
but only temporarily. If they persist in re- 
maining together, or are unable to get away 
from each other for a while, the attitude of 
simple indifference gradually changes into 
boredom, and boredom later into annoyance. 
On the other hand, if they separate for a time 
— ^hours, days, or weeks, as the particular case 
may require — the two become depolarized, and 
once more the mutual attraction state is pre- 
sent. The physical channel is reopened, the 
channel which is the natural pathway, the 
line of least resistance for the emotion of love 
to travel by. 

Examples of htmian polarization and de- 
magnetization are often seen in brothers and 
sisters and other near relatives, slaves of cir- 
cumstance, who are forced by economic or 
other considerations to live together closely 
and continuously. They have to see each 
other every day and all day, morning, noon, 
and even night. In modem city life and 
money stress, room space is at such a premitmi 
that it is hardly an exaggeration to say that 

79 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

privacy is a luxury which can only be enjoyed 
for brief intervals in bathrooms. Under such 
"civilized'' conditions relatives and married 
people grow to almost hate each other. 

One more physical analogy which may be 
cited is the phenomenon of sympathetic vi- 
bration. When two vibrating instruments, 
such as tuning forks, are keyed to the same 
pitch ; when one is struck and vibrates or sounds 
out its note, the other will also vibrate in uni- 
son, even though at a considerable distance 
from the one which was struck. If one fork 
is keyed higher or lower than the other, it will 
not vibrate when the other is struck. 

So it may be with married people or with 
friends. When the nervous systems of both 
are vibrating at the same rate of speed, each 
will respond and thrill to the other. But when 
one is tired, and therefore vibrating at a lower 
rate, or is overwrought and vibrating at an 
abnormally high rate, there is no more re- 
sponse between them until readjustment of 
their nervous instruments takes place. 

Returning once more to the second elec- 

80 



FATIGUE 

trical analogy, which is perhaps the better one, 
the current of the polarizing battery was found 
to be too inconstant to be of much practical 
use. Therefore chemists studied the problem 
and presently discovered physical and chemi- 
cal means which could prevent polarization 
and thus enable a constant current to flow 
through and from the battery. 

In much the same way physiologists and 
psychologists have studied the corresponding 
himian problem. It is immensely more com- 
plicated than the mere physico-chemical one, 
but it has been analyzed and reduced to its 
elements. The laws that govern himian 
attraction and repulsion are now imderstood, 
and the practical adaptation of domestic life 
to those laws prevents htmian polarization, or 
demagnetism, or unsympathetic vibration. 



8i 



CHAPTER VII 

CONVENTIONAL BOGIES 

Double Bed/S 

''The marriage state is holy and the bed is 
undefiled," says the Good Book. Doubtless, 
when all that is implied in that phrase is taken 
into consideration. But as to beds, it is the 
unanimous opinion of those who know, that 
the most deadly single enemy to the conserva- 
tion of romance and of magnetism in marriage 
is the sacred and time-worn institution, the 
continuous nightmare, known as the double 
bed. Let there be no misunderstanding on this 
point. Apart from honeymoons, the only 
objection to double beds is their continuous, 
habitual use, night after night, month after 
month, by many married people in blind obed- 
ience to a custom passed down by our ances- 

82 



CONVENTIONAL BOGIES 

tors, who probably had better nerves than 
their modem descendants. A woman once 
said to me: ''My husband and I were always 
so devoted to each other that we were never 
separated a single night since our wedding — 
except one night when my baby was bom/' 
Poor man! I happened to know something 
about his home life. The wife's fond remark 
was made on the occasion of his ftmeral. 

In America, the land of new and daring 
departures, the double bed is being more and 
more replaced by single beds in the homes of 
the present generation. Yet even now, es- 
pecially in small commimities, the gossips 
still give each other thrills when one tells 
another how ''Mrs. So-and-So's servant told 
my maid that Mr. and Mrs. Somebodyelse 
occupy separate beds ! " The increasing use of 
single beds in America has sprung from an 
imperative though perhaps subconscious need 
of the new race that is developing from the 
European amalgamation. The most prominent 
characteristic of that new race thus far is a 
restless energy. Also there are keen intellect, 

83 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

great adaptability, resourcefulness, and a rela- 
tively high standard of family life. This com- 
bination indicates highly strimg, finely organ- 
ized nervous systems of a type that may be 
described as electric. Now people of this vivid 
ardent type cannot express themselves well in 
the staid, conventional, hum-drtmi modes of 
their ancestors. And therefore to them the 
marriage of their ancestor^, with the sacred 
obligation of the permanent double bed, be- 
came intolerable and a menace to the security 
of the home. After a period of much unhappi- 
ness, unprecedented scandals, and a holocaust 
of divorces, the American qualities of adapta- 
bility and resourcefulness were brought into 
action on the marriage question, and presently 
the permanent double bed, the modem mar- 
riage juggernaut, began its stubborn retreat 
into history and the garret, there to rejoin its 
ancient contemporaries — wigs, hoopskirts, side- 
saddles, snuff-boxes, commodes, chastity cases, 
and other things obsolete. j| 

While double beds are of course quite the 
proper thing when really desired by both 

84 



CONVENTIONAL BOGIES 

parties, it often happens that one may be 
feeHng tired or worried or restless, or perhaps 
not very well, and would prefer to sleep alone. 
Unfortunately frankness is often lacking. 
One may be afraid of hurting the other's 
feelings, or of seeming indifferent, and for that 
reason may endure the other's presence. In 
such cases there is never any mutual satisfac- 
tion but the reverse. 

It is easy to understand how people who are 
sensitive and loving may try to deceive each 
other in this way — because they shrink from 
inflicting pain. If they only understood the 
elementary laws of physiology and psychology, 
of physics and chemistry, they would know 
that the seeming indifference which comes 
from fatigue or worry or indigestion is not 
something to be ashamed of or to require ex- 
cuses. It is as natural and impersonal as that 
water runs down hill. If both had this knowl- 
edge it would be almost inconceivable that 
either could think of blaming the other, or 
feel that it was necessary to deceive. 

There are many variants of the double bed 

85 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

obsession. Mutually polarized couples think 
they must invariably go everywhere together, 
to church together, on week-ends together; 
in short, that they must not only try to be 
always hand in hand, but like Siamese twins- 
Here is an example typical of many. A polar- 
ized couple, the woman with repression hys- 
teria, the man with repression and fatigue 
neurasthenia, both considering divorce for the 
last three years. They attend church together, 
evenings together, week-ends together, and 
occupy a three-quarter bed every night of the 
year. In another example a pair became 
polarized at first, but later found the courage 
to face the facts. They tried twin beds and 
going in opposite directions for week-ends, and 
now they are happy and in harmony for the 
other five days of the week. 

Family Fixations 

There is something corresponding to herd 
instinct in many people which takes the form 
of exaggerated or dog-like devotion to all who 

86 



CONVENTIONAL BOGIES 

are of blood kindred. When strong it is often 
without discrimination and puts the relatives 
above the husband, wife or children. Proba- 
bly it comes from the continental European 
and Mongolian age-old custom of deferring 
always to the parents in all domestic affairs; 
a kind of paternalism, in fact. In China and 
Japan the mother of the young man always 
selects his bride for him, even if he has a foreign 
education and is living in another coimtry, and 
he always slavishly obeys her mandate. This 
appears to be one of the few ways in which the 
women of such countries, where woman is still 
in subjection, have their innings and dictate 
to men. The mother of the man also rules the 
new household if she happens to be in the 
neighborhood, and the wife submits. In 
Continental Europe it is still the same in many 
States, though to a somewhat lesser extent. 
In Italy, for example, the man's father and 
mother come first ; his brothers, sisters, cousins 
and aimts second; and his wife a weak third, 
particularly if she is foreign bom. Naturally, 
in cotmtries where such ideas prevail, the 

87 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

woman is regarded as the man's inferior, and 
she as a rule passively accepts the situation. 
To mention a case in point, a beautiful young 
Italian woman of good family was recently 
married to a young man personally and fi- 
nancially her inferior, but being a man he was of 
course her superior in everything else. A girl 
of her personality, in America, England, or 
some other Northern countfries, could have had 
almost any man she chose. But being in Italy 
she had no choice at all, and had to abide by 
the decision of her own and the yoimg man's 
parents. During the engagement her future 
mother-in-law remarked one day: '*I intend 
to take charge of your first child myself.'' 
Of course the girl did not like that prospect at 
all, but there would be nothing for her to do 
but to lump it, if the elder woman did not 
change her mind. 

In most Northern countries they have got 
pretty well away from all that now, thank 
God ! But there still survive people of the type 
that make a kind of fetish of their relatives, 
deferring to them in many things and making 

88 



1 



CONVENTIONAL BOGIES 

sacrifices for them even at the expense of 
husband or wife or children. Or they will 
insist on having a relative or two live in their 
home, against the wishes of the mate. Now all 
that is wrong, stupidly wrong, and is certain 
to lead to serious discord between husband and 
wife. The ancient prejudice against mothers- 
in-law is well founded, in the main, and the 
cases are generally more serious where it is the 
man's mother. A man can often tolerate his 
wife's mother, at least for a while, because he 
is out of the house most of the time. But the 
imf ortunate wife simply cannot get away from 
her husband's mother all day long. The 
mother-in-law^ always feels sure that she could 
nm her son's house and bring up his children 
much better than the young and inexperienced 
wife can do; and in some cases it might be 
true. Even if she has sense enough not to say 
so — which usually she hasn't — her silent dis- 
approval and the very real pressure of her 
negative thought will weigh on the wife, 
affecting her efficiency and destroying her 
peace of mind. So the only safe and wise and 

89 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

fair rule should be: The home first, relatives 
after. 

False Pride and Shyness 

False pride and shyness are frequent bar- 
riers to the expression of love, though usually 
preventable and curable. Let us take a 
hypothetical case. A normal pair have mar- 
ried and have become polatized from one cause 
or another. Neither knows anything about the 
laws of personal relations. Both are sensitive. 
Not understanding that their coldness is due 
to, say fatigue from continuous intimacy and 
their double bed, each thinks the other has 
ceased to love. Their pride is hurt in the 
deepest possible way, especially the woman's. 
Each disdains to make any advance unless the 
other does, and the result is a suspension of 
everything but the most important things of 
all — the continuous intimacy and often the 
double bed. 

Then some providential development causes 
one to go away for a while. In that interval 
they both become depolarized and think of 

90 



CONVENTIONAL BOGIES 

each other again with love and longing. When 
they come together once more, instead of 
letting Nature take its course, mutual pride 
and reserve come in. Each remembers the 
former coldness and the hurt feelings, and 
waits for the other to make the first move. 
That is of course largely false pride, wotmded 
vanity, standing on dignity, as you wish to 
regard it. In other cases pride may be put 
aside, but in its place there is shyness about 
taking the initiative. Whether pride or shy- 
ness the effect is the same, and while it lasts, 
the two who should go with joy to each other's 
arms, stand and wait — a kind of ''watchful 
waiting" as negative there as in the situations 
that coined the phrase. Unless some sudden 
shock sends them together before they realize 
it, the pair continue to keep up their separation 
within tmion — even in their double bed. Per- 
haps not till years later, after they have ob- 
served the married lives of others, or have read 
really helpful books on sex, do they come at 
last to understand one another and therefore 
to forgive. But they still stand apart, sullen 

91 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

or sad, or shy and sad, from pride, or from 
automatism, in the habit of heart isolation 
they have developed from long persistence in 
a mistaken coirrse. 

Yet since there is real love in the hearts of 
both, there is always the hope and the possi- 
bility of reunion, and this time of permanent 
reunion, because they now have something at 
least of experience and of Knowledge. All that 
is needed is the shock, the shell, perhaps, that 
will demolish the barriers of reserve that have 
grown up between them. Or instead of any- 
thing comparable to shell-shock, a mutual 
friend who tmderstands may persuade one to 
take the first step ; and then in the joy of the 
reunion they realize that it might just as well 
have been long, long ago, and that all the 
heartaches and wounds and suUenness and 
shyness came not from ceasing to love but 
from complete misunderstanding. 



92 



CHAPTER VIII 

JEALOUSY AND TEARS 

The frequent occurrence of jealousy in friend- 
ship, love, and marriage, and the almost 
imiversal misconceptions about its signifi- 
cance, warrant a careful psychological analy- 
sis of jealousy itself, the conditions in 
which it develops, and the means for its 
prevention. 

Jealousy is a complex of doubt, fear, htmiili- 
ation, anger, resentment, and hatred. The 
first four are introspective states : the last two 
are extraspective (if I may coin such a word) 
states, directed towards the person who has 
aroused the first fotu*. Otherwise stated, 
jealousy is a reaction consisting of the before- 
mentioned emotions, or elements, caused by 
the thought of the transfer of the affections of 
a person loved to another person. By psy- 

93 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

chological analysis we find the elements in 
the following order: 

Doubt — of one's capacity to hold the desired 
affection ; fear — of the loss of those affections ; 
humiliation — at the preference shown to an- 
other; anger — because deprived of something 
desired; resentment — towards the person re- 
sponsible; hatred — the active phase of resent- 
ment, directed towards th^t person and seek- 
ing opportunities for revenge. 

A desire to hold a person for the sake of the 
love to be got from that person, is not so much 
love for that other person as love for self. Or 
to state it more strongly: Desire to hold 
possession of another person's body and love, 
against the preference of that other for some- 
one else, and in disregard of his or her happi- 
ness ; such a desire is clearly not love for the 
one desired, but instead a desire to enjoy that 
one for love of one's own self. 

Desire to hold another person in order to 
keep him or her from others, or so as to be 
known or spoken of enviously as the one pre- 
ferred, is unqualified vanity. Consequently, 

94 



I 



JEALOUSY AND TEARS 

the jealousy complex requires for its founda- 
tion a nature in which self-love and vanity 
are prominent. Jealousy, then, stated in the 
fewest possible words, is wounded self-love , 
wounded vanity, and confessed inferiority. 

To be wounded is to be weakened. To be 
jealous is always a sign of loss of confidence and 
loss of power — loss of power to hold a cher- 
ished, or rather coveted, possession. The effect 
of jealousy on the person desired is usually 
irritating, partly because it to some extent 
pricks his or her conscience, and because it has 
the irk of a limitation of one's freedom. Dur- 
ing courtship jealousy may occasionally flatter 
the vanity of a vain person, and in that way 
give a vicious sort of pleasure. Also, jealousy 
may sometimes be deliberately incited after 
marriage, with the idea of strengthening a 
hold that seems to be relaxing. But as a 
general rule the occurrence of jealousy in 
marriage irritates the offending one and swiftly 
widens the breach. 

A little thought will show why this is in- 
evitable. Jealousy is a criticism and a protest 

95 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

against the conduct of the one whose affec- 
tion or sex interest has strayed, and a 
demand that such interest be withdrawn from 
the new object and restored to the former or 
legal one. The criticism, protest, and demand 
are often accompanied with reproaches, criti- 
cism and ridicule of the person preferred, and — 
tears ! Now however much the criticism may 
be deserved, it is not welcome ; in fact, the more 
it is deserved, the less it is desired, the more 
it is resented, and the more it irritates. Irri- 
tation is the reverse of interest, especially sex 
interest. 

Another thing. The jealous partner, by 
showing jealousy, exhibits and admits weak- 
ness or loss of attractive power — particularly 
when in tears — and at the same time expresses, 
though perhaps mutely, the legal hold which 
he or she has on the other. That combination 
of personal weakness and legal strength is not 
a happy one to emphasize at such a time. 
Nothing is more futile, more hopeless, than to 
demand affection as one's right when it cannot 
be inspired by one's personality. That is the 

96 



JEALOUSY AND TEARS 

very quickest way of losing what still remains, 
and all hope of regaining what has been per- 
haps only temporarily transferred to another. 

We often hear and read the expression, 
''Jealousy is inseparable from love/' Let us 
examine that proposition. We have shown 
that ordinary jealousy is nothing but woimded 
self-love and wounded vanity. Most people 
have considerable self-love and vanity in them, 
which are easily touched. Furthermore, jeal- 
ousy and touchiness are expressions of uncon- 
scious recognition of weakness and inferiority. 
Love, on the contrary, expresses strength and 
superiority. In the great Oriental philosophy 
the Creative Power which brought the mani- 
fested imiverse into existence is, in the ultimate 
analysis, love. If love holds that superlative 
place in the scheme of evolution, where does 
jealousy come in? 

In the more progressed human minority 
there remain varying degrees of self-love and 
vanity, while in those advanced ones whose 
lives are mainly devoted to the service of 
others, the vices or weaknesses self-love and 
7 97 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

vanity are almost outgrown. The amount of 
jealousy that can be caused in any person will 
be in direct proportion to the amount of self- 
love and vanity which are present. In the 
course of evolution all will gradually learn, by 
repeated disillusionment, that to work for self 
is to pursue shadows, and that only by giving 
can we get that which is worth having. 

A very common delusion^ among the many 
delusions which operate as sins against Love, 
is that tears add to a woman's attractiveness. 
The older writers of romance drew largely on 
this for their effective scenes. Their inane 
heroines invariably wept on every occasion 
where a display of grief or petulance seemed in 
order, and whenever the sympathies of men 
were to be invoked. Modern writers still copy 
the older ones, and even the great poets — the 
real seers and divine teachers at times — often 
fall into the old threadbare delusion. 

As a matter of cold and cruel fact in every- 
day life, people do not look their best, or more 
appealing, when crying, even when they hap- 
pen to be beautiful women, and nobody really 

98 



JEALOUSY AND TEARS 

believes that they do. Divested of all the 
glamour of romance and poetry, grief, misery, 
and pity, crying is a complex of red and swollen 
eyelids, red and swollen and snuffling noses, 
and blotchy cheeks. These may very well 
excite pity, if the occasion justifies it, but 
certainly not admiration. 

Every woman should realize that although 
before her marriage her tears may have 
seemed to have been a powerful lever for play- 
ing on her fiance's sympathies and his desire 
to please her, the case is entirely different 
after marriage. Before marriage there were 
the frequent but comparatively short hours 
together, alternated with longer separations; 
their incomplete knowledge of each other, and 
the usual tmcertainties, mysteries, expecta- 
tions, and illusions of sex. But after marriage 
those factors, as a sad rule, soon disappear. 
Each appears before the other as he (or she) 
actually is, without camouflage, in all their 
good points and imperfections, literally naked 
and — unashamed. The deadly convention of 
continuous intimacy, day and night, has con- 

99 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

tributed its powerful quota to the general 
disillusionment, and by banishing all reserve 
and privacy has smothered almost every 
thrill of romance and nearly all mutual respect 
and self-respect. Polarization is complete and 
the electric circuit is interrupted. Whatever 
of self-control they may have had before 
marriage, in the efforts to show each other 
only their best, is now abandoned. Selfishness, 
carelessness, and bad temper are given free 
rein. When the woman falls back on crying, 
she finds that it calls out only annoyance, 
perhaps even disgust. Each despises in the 
other every sign of lack of self-control; and 
crying is surely a sign of that, even though 
commonly regarded as a privilege of women 
and children. Hence the polarized husband's 
disgust. 

What may be called spurious forms of 
jealousy are often seen in instances where the 
man and wife have long ceased to find roman- 
tic or sex interest in each other. One of them 
strikes up a friendship with someone else, and 
then the partner becomes jealous. The jeal- 

100 



JEALOUSY AND TEARS 

ousy may show in several ways; as a kind of 
dog-in-the-manger attitude which resents that 
anyone else should enjoy what he or she does 
not or cannot; as pique, htmiiliation or 
woimded vanity because another is preferred ; 
or a mere conventional reaction that it is the 
proper thing to be jealous if one's mate cares 
ever so little for someone else; or again — and 
even more important — if it is thought that 
people may think or say that such is the case! 
That is jealousy ''a la mode/' In a case in 
point a permanently indifferent husband f otmd 
an unknown man's picture in his wife's bureau, 
and then succeeded in working himself up to 
such a pitch of conventional fury that he 
talked about blood and ''unwritten law." 

From the limitless viewpoint of unselfish 
love, jealousy is an anachronism. Instead of 
being ''inseparable from love," jealousy is 
incompatible with love, being, as it is, the 
negation of love. 

Keeping in mind that love depends on in- 
spiration, we realize the monimiental abstird- 
ity of lawsuits for alienation of affections. If 

lOI 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

affection is really alienated, that is, permanent- 
ly transferred to another, it means that an- 
other has greater power of inspiration than the 
marriage partner. That greater power may 
be only relative, depending on temporary 
inferiority of the partner. In all such cases it 
is up to neglected partners to take stock of 
their present equipment of personal attractive- 
ness and to ascertain whether they have 
slacked off since marriage. If so, they should 
correct the deficiency and see what happens. 
But do not show jealousy. To be loved, one 
must be lovable, and to be jealous is to be 
irritating and unlovable. To sue another per- 
son for alienation of affections is to proclaim 
one's own inferiority in power to inspire. It 
would be just as consistent, and far more 
honest, to sue someone for the offense of being 
more beautiful than oneself because the 
Declaration of Independence says that all are 
created equal. 

Legal procedure in this matter is so amaz- 
ingly lacking in the simplest considerations of 
psychology, that we are forced to conclude 

I02 



JEALOUSY AND TEARS 

that other considerations are responsible for its 
preposterous and unsatisfactory state. Law 
is made by lawyers. This is true even of the 
Common Law, which is simply the accumu- 
lated decisions of judges, who themselves are 
only lawyers higher up. As selfish abuse of 
power is still the rule in our world, and as the 
law is the expression of power and authority; 
so it comes about that those who make law are 

I often dominated by selfish motives. In the 

'fewest words, it follows that much of the 
civil law and its administration that we 
are cirrsed with is made hy lawyers and for 
lawyers. 

Suits for alienation of affections, be it 

[noted, are seldom brought unless the persons 
sued are wealthy, objects of possible pltmder 

'for jealous and confessed inferiors or black- 
mailers, and of certain plimder for dishonest 
lawyers on both sides of the cases. No mat- 
ter which side loses, the lawyers always 
win. 

Hence the discouraging fact that our legal 

[System provides that a person (of wealth) 

103 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

may be sued for being more attractive than a 
jealous inferior, is not so remarkable after all. 
There is method in this apparently mad or 
brainless legal arrangement. 



104 



CHAPTER IX 

VARIETY OF INTERESTS 

Where people have any kind of work in 
common they usually find each other some- 
what interesting. The same is true of amuse- 
ments in common, or conversation, or thought. 
To have mutual interest there must always be 
a kind of mediimi of exchange, something in 
which co-operation can take place. As soon 
as the w^ork or other factor stops or ceases to 
fimction, mutual interest ceases also, in that 
particular field. But if after working together 
two people can enjoy similar amusements to- 
gether, their mutual interest does not cease but 
is transferred to another field. If those two 
can also find pleasure in exchanging ideas on 
abstract subjects, they will then have a com- 
munity of interests during a large part of their 
time. Add to these personal physical har- 

105 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

mony, and in each some capacity for self- 
sacrifice, and there exist all the elements on 
which permanent friendship can be built. 
Add to all these difference in sex, and there 
are present the conditions in which the ro- 
mance and poetry of life can and indeed must 
inevitably show forth. Happy indeed are the 
friends, and especially the men and women, 
who have so much in common and whom Fate 
brings together ! 

Variety is the spice of life. A famous line 
says ''Who shall exhaust her infinite variety? '' 
The poetic line expresses the elemental desire 
of all men toward women. The ideal woman of 
the ordinary world's desire is a radiant creature 
of changeless beauty but infinitely changeable 
in all else, a kaleidoscope of moods and ex- 
pressions. 

But that alluring creature of man's desire 
is after all a rather frothy conception, a 
counterfeit, but like all counterfeits an immi- 
tation of something genuine and precious. 
The imitation ideal woman is a sequence of 
desire-emotion reactions, illusory, shifting, im- 

io6 



VARIETY OF INTERESTS 

permanent, arising in caprice, sensation, and 
selfishness. The genuine and permanent va- 
riety in a personaHty rests on the things that 
count and endure. Such variety expresses the 
various capacities or modes of expression of a 
personaHty. In simi, the variety of the illu- 
sory personality is the expression of numerous 
moods, desires, and impulses; while the variety 
of the permanent individuality expresses so 
many capacities or faculties — an immense 
difference. 

There is a very important consideration in 
regard to subjects of common interest in (i) 
friendship, and (2) marriage. A very real 
friendship can develop on a basis of a single 
common interest. The other interests which 
the friend has do not have to obtrude on or 
conflict with the common interest. The friends 
separate during the times when those other 
interests are being enjoyed, and the enjoy- 
ment usually takes place in association with 
other friends. In fact the time together which 
is spent by friends who have only one interest 
in common is usually a very small part of their 

107 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

total time. When they have for the time 
being exhausted the one field of common inter- 
est they separate amicably, or even with relief. 
The two mutually and intuitively know when 
it is time to part, and there being no conven- 
tional rule impelling them to remain longer, 
they part friends, with hopes of further good 
times together. Each then goes his or her own 
way, seeking either privacy, repose, or other 
friends whom each can enjoy in a new field 
which the friend just parted from could not 
enjoy or take part in. 

From the foregoing restmie of friendship, one 
supreme fact emerges. Most people of the 
educated classes have two or more sides to 
their personalities. Those sides have as many 
separate interests. Now we all know that 
however much one may be interested in a 
thing or a subject, that interest is enhanced by 
sharing it with another person. More than 
that, any deep interest craves or demands 
comradeship. As said before, in a case of ideal 
friendship both are able to enjoy, to co-operate, 
in many interests. But even in the most com- 

io8 



VARIETY OF INTERESTS 

plete friendships of that kind, one or both are 
likely to have still other interests, and perhaps 
very dear interests, in which the other cannot 
share. Naturally, therefore, such special and 
intimate interests may be shared with some 
other persons, even though those others do not 
enter the wider circle of friendship. 

The laws governing friendship apply also in 
marriage, the legal sex-relation notwithstand- 
ing. The latter naturally holds a prominent 
place in the marriage complex, before and for 
a time after marriage. But almost inevitably 
a time comes when mere difference in sex can 
no longer maintain mutual interest to the 
exclusion of other strong interests. And in 
strict accordance with the law of alternation 
the maintainance of mutual sex interest ab- 
solutely depends on a succession of periods of 
mutual interest in other subjects. Active sex 
interest means consciousness at high rates of 
vibration, and emotions under pressure. Uni- 
versal experience teaches that such tense 
moods cannot be maintained for a long time. 
The same is true for enjoyment of scenery, 

109 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

drama, music, oratory. If persisted in after 
the interest begins to lag, interest is soon suc- 
ceeded by boredom, and finally by pain. A 
more crude analogy exists in desire for food. 
No desire or aspiration is so compelling as the 
desire for food when one is healthily and 
ravenously hungry, as after a long day in the 
woods without anything to eat. Yet that 
desire is very soon satisfied. If after that 
point has been reached more food is taken, the 
keen enjoyment of a short time ago gives place 
to dislike, and even to nausea. The degener- 
ate Romans, in their lust for physical sensa- 
tion, sought to make keen appetites continuous 
by the expedient of vomiting at certain stages of 
their banquets. The practice soon brought its 
punishment — or rather reaction — in serious dis- 
turbance of and later loss of digestive function. 

So with abuse of sexual partnerships. The 
former delight is followed first by boredom, 
then disgust, then hatred, and finally even 
loss of function. 

These, then, are the lamentable results that 
follow exhaustion and overworking of one 

no 



VARIETY OF INTERESTS 

medium of exchange between two people, with 
no alternating mediimi in which they both 
could transfer their interest for a time. It is 
the more lamentable because such results are 
preventable by means of knowledge easy to 
acquire, and by common sense. 

We will now try to apply the principles that 
imderlie successful friendship to marriage. 
Friends, no matter how many interests they 
may enjoy in common, separate when they 
are tired of each other. After a period of 
separation, long or short as may suit them, 
they come together again for another experi- 
ence of mutual pleasure and benefit, and 
separate once more. Each time they come 
together they have the joy of physical near- 
ness, the mutual satisfaction of co-operation 
either in work or exchange of ideas or diver- 
sions, and then the — shall we say it? — the 
mutual relief of separation. The success of 
this cycle is proven by the continuity of the 
friendship. Furthermore, each friend has his 
or her other friends, with whom each, in the 
interim, may share other interests. 

Ill 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

Essential htmian nature does not change 
with marriage. Interest or boredom in mar- 
riage, as in friendship, are moods resulting 
from conditions that should be within easy- 
control, if people would only have the sense 
to apply to their married life the obvious 
lessons taught by courtship in all ages, and 
even by many illicit unions. In courtship 
there are the eagerly anticipated meetings, 
the evenings and holidays spent together, 
kisses and caresses, the partings every night, 
and the looked-forward-to meeting next day. 
In marriage there are all these, plus the com- 
plete sexual intimacy, and minus the partings 
every night. Where then does the usual dis- 
illusionment come in? Many will say through 
the unrestrained sexual licence. That may be 
true for some cases, but not for the majority. 
Note the numerous illicit unions which con- 
tinue happily — or at any rate with mutual 
satisfaction and undoubted sex interest — for 
many years, and not infrequently end in 
marriage. The procedure in those unions 
resembles that of courtship more than of 

112 



VARIETY OF INTERESTS 

marriage. There is in addition the complete 
sexual tmion, which as a rule is absent in 
courtship. But — and observe the but — there 
are frequent partings as in courtship, and 
frequent nightly separations. 

In stim, then, we have the following facts: 

1. In courtship romantic or sex interest is 
retained. 

2. In illicit unions romantic or sex interest 
is retained. 

3. In marriage romantic or sex interest is 
often lost. 

4. In marriage there is one new and promi- 
nent factor which is absent in courtship and in 
illicit love — continuous intimacy. 

The logical inference from a comparison of 
the foregoing facts is plain. The sexual in- 
difference and resulting unhappiness that so 
often occur in marriage are largely due to the 
continuous intimacy that is forced upon hus- 
band and wife by conventional views on mar- 
riage and economic necessity. 



113 



CHAPTER X 

LOVE AND BEAUTY 

The contemplation of the beautiful in Nature 
and in Art calls forth a response which differs 
in degree and in quality in different persons, 
but which has one thing in common, namely, 
pleasure or enjoyment. This may vary in 
degree from mild interest to passionate en- 
thusiasm; and in quality, on the blend of 
intellect and feeling involved. The Indian 
psychologist, Bhagavan Das, calls this reaction 
the ''emotion of beauty.'' Then he analyzes 
the emotion inspired by beauty, and finally 
reduces it, simply and definitely, to the 
emotion of Love. The presence of beauty, 
therefore, in any form, — the action of beauty — 
inspires, or rather evokes, a reaction of love. 
This is exceedingly significant as to the essen- 
tial value of beauty as a creator of love, and 

114 



LOVE AND BEAUTY 

of the position it takes in friendship, affection, 
and marriage. 

No attempt will be made here to specifically 
define beauty, for the perception and concep- 
tion of beauty are largely individual reactions, 
and therefore vary as infinitely as do individ- 
uals. However, a practical and flexible defini- 
tion, what may be called a working definition 
of beauty, can be ventured without stultify- 
ing the first words of this paragraph. Beauty, 
then, in man, woman, or child, is an harmo- 
nious combination of curves and color, and of 
stimuli to the other senses besides sight, which 
imparts to a given beholder a feeling of agree- 
ableness; which, depending on its degree, is 
either pleastire, enjoyment, delight, or ecstacy 
— all being grades of the emotion of love. 

The reaction in a beholder, to what conforms 
more or less to his or her concept of beauty, is 
involuntary, irrespective to the degree or 
intensity of the reaction. The reaction is na- 
turally greater in intensity when there is dif- 
ference in sex. When one or both happen to be 
married to other persons, the reaction is just 

115 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

the same. There is no more wrong attached 
to such a natural response between man and 
woman than there is when flint and steel strike 
fire. Wrong comes in only when one or both 
yield to selfish considerations to such an extent 
that they bring suffering to others whose lives 
are linked with their own. The weak yield; 
the strong do not ; and again as to wrongdoing, 
in the magnificent and lining conception of 
Eastern philosophy, weakness and strength 
are expressions of soul experience^ of duration 
of individual evolution. 

Let it be assumed, then, (i) that beauty in 
one person, when it corresponds with another's 
concept of beauty, inevitably and automati- 
cally draws forth or evokes from the other a 
feeling of interest and attraction, the intensity 
of which depends on the extent to which that 
concept is realized. (2) Difference in sex 
emphasizes the feeling or response evoked, and 
adds also an element of desire, evanescent or 
enduring, depending on the intensity of the 
response or reaction elicited. (3) Beauty 
(always the individual concept) is Nature's 

116 



LOVE AND BEAUTY 

most essential element in causing men and 
women to seek union and marriage. (4) When 
beauty is conserved and reverenced as a divine 
thing, it remains a solid foundation for endur- 
ing love and happiness in marriage. Only in 
this way is it true in marriage that ''a thing of 
beauty is a joy forever.'' 

The foregoing assumptions lead to the very 
important consideration as to what things 
are essential for married happiness, aside from 
merely physical necessities, such as money. 
Many yoimg people rush into marriage almost 
wholly tmder the glamour of sex attraction. 
When they are what may be called normal 
yotmg persons, whose first ardent sex interest 
in each other is later on transferred to the 
coming child, such a marriage has excellent 
prospects for continued happiness, because it 
provides always a common interest and is 
operating as Nature intended of marriage. 

On the other side, people who marry from 
sex motives mostly, who do not have children, 
and who do not engage in any cooperative 
work, intellectual or philanthropic, soon come 

117 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

to what may be called the negative phase of 
sex attraction. Their lack of anything else in 
common, their mutual imperfections, and even 
lack of personal beauty, become evident when 
the alluring veils of sex glamour are torn away 
or worn out. 

In contrast with these two classes of people 
who blindly plunge into marriage there is a 
steadily increasing class who have education 
and will power enough to bring to bear some 
measure of reason and common sense when 
they are considering marriage. It is only for 
such people that a book like this may be help- 
ful. Others will read it with more or less pass- 
ing interest — because it deals with sex — but 
they will forget all about it when psychological 
moments arrive. 

As love and beauty are inseparable, it 
follows that beauty is essential to happiness 
in marriage — it being always understood that 
by beauty is meant that which appears beauti- 
ful to a given individual. As every cultured 
person usually has an ideal of what to him or 
her is beauty — even though that ideal may be 

ii8 



LOVE AND BEAUTY 

rather vague — and as that ideal always looms 
in the vision of the future union with another; 
it is clear that if for any reason they marry 
persons who do not to some extent express that 
ideal, the marriage will soon fall short of what 
was longed for, and is likely to degenerate into 
a dreary, lifeless affair. (For the moment only 
physical beauty is under consideration.) 
Therefore it would be well if the people who 
believe they have ideals in their minds of the 
kind of physical beauty to be desired in their 
future mates, — it would be well if they gave it 
definite thought, and then reached conclusions 
one way or the other ; either shaping the ideal 
in some amount of detail ; or, if on examination 
the ideal cannot be well defined, to discard it 
and leave everything to Fate or chance. 

People of the first instance — those who find 
that they have definite ideals of physical 
beauty — should endeavor to hold their ideals 
constantly available for comparisons, and 
should not allow themselves to marry persons 
whose output of beauty is distinctly inferior 
to their ideals. 

119 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

Some persons have ideals of physical beauty 
which demand perfection of certain parts of 
the body. One man may be particularly 
attracted by a beautiful face, another by 
beauty of form. But the ideal may and often 
does lay particular stress on beauty of one or 
several parts of the body. Thus to a man it 
may be a straight or retrousse nose or shell- 
like ears; small or slender hands or feet; 
beauty of arms and shoulders, or of ankles, 
legs or hips; a slender or a Milo waist; large 
or small breasts; a faultless back; a clear skin, 
golden or black hair; and so on. Or it may be 
some mode of self-expression, as a sweet voice 
or a graceful walk. 

The individual interests that delight in 
beauty of certain parts of the body of the 
beloved one are designated by scientific writers 
on sexology as Fetishes. The word has a most 
unromantic sound in relation to love expres- 
sion, and also an unpleasant connotation as of 
barbarous or superstitious practices, or Tan- 
trie or Voodoo ceremonies. But the impor- 
tance of the fetish ideal as a factor in married 

120 



LOVE AND BEAUTY 

happiness is frankly admitted by psychologists. 
To quote one of them, ''When the various 
fetishes which attract a man are found in one 
woman, let us say, red hair, dark eyes, and a 
slender build, we have the foimdations for a 
passionate and durable love.''^ 

In all such cases where a physical ideal 
means much to a man or to a woman, it is 
probably an indication of a real want or need 
in their essential natures. And therefore it 
should not be disregarded when they marry. 
When one's nature joys in beauty, where one's 
thoughts dwell on the beautiful, it means that 
one's love nature finds its natural and true 
response and expression in a mate whose per- 
sonality expresses beauty in a form or com- 
bination that is in some measure complemen- 
tary. Consequently, when such natiu-es are 
linked with others whom they afterwards find 
are not their physical complements, they are 
imable to give them spontaneous or true love 
responses. 

There is no fault or culpability in either. 

* Andre Tridon in Psychoanalysis, Sleep and Dreams^ p. 146. 

121 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

The pair do not make a durable reciprocating 
combination, that is all. If they succeed in 
reaching some harmonic adjustment, it must 
necessarily be based on other conditions of 
mutual interest, well enough as far as they go, 
but a sorry substitute for romance. If there 
is a child or children, on whom the love energy 
may be lavished, this, with some will power 
and with slight temptation, may hold the 
thoughts and interest in the home circle until 
advancing age diminishes the sex urge. But 
otherwise, if someone else is met whose person- 
ality meets the deep inner need, a response 
will go out to that other. If one's sense of 
duty or of convention is strong enough, the 
outward expression of the new love response 
may be withheld, but the feeling and the 
thought are not. We do not blame water 
because it runs downhill, even though that 
property of water occasionally works to our 
disadvantage. Neither should we blame or 
censure men and women when their love force 
goes out to those who are their natural affini- 
ties, whatever may be their social bonds. The 

122 



LOVE AND BEAUTY 

flow of water and the flow of love obey the 
same physical law ; they seek their level along 
lines of least resistance. They are neither 
good nor evil, but phenomena of Nature. The 
element of wrong only comes in when two 
people yield to the physical expression of their 
natural desires to an extent that causes un- 
happiness or injury to those they are under 
moral and legal obligations to protect. 

When married partners come to realize that 
both may have sides to their natures on which 
they two cannot meet, but on which others of 
opposite sex can meet them, they should then 
be ready for the further realization that sane 
and enduring happiness in marriage is not 
incompatible with other minor heart attach- 
ments, the ''lesser loves" that Edward Car- 
penter speaks of, subsidiary to the husband or 
wife, but ministering to certain essential 
needs which they cannot reach. 

Such an attitude is almost a guaranty that a 
marriage will be happy. It excludes the de- 
mon of jealousy by not demanding absolute 
and often impossible possession of love interest. 

123 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

By providing for those partial alternations of 
love interests it prevents polarization, and in 
doing that goes a long way towards assuring 
permanence of the greater love which unites 
man and wife. 

One continuing to love; the other ceas- 
ing TO LOVE. This may have several explana- 
tions. In the first place there is the funda- 
mental proposition : That^love only ceases to 
manifest (i) when its inspiration ceases; (2) 
when its vehicle is in a state of fatigue; (3) 
after a psychic shock; (4) when transferred 
to another object. First to be considered is the 
quality of the love of the one who continues to 
love ; whether it is true outgoing love, or coun- 
terfeit acquisitive love, which is not so much 
love as selfish desire. In the last instance there 
is always desire to receive, always demand for 
more, and hardly any given out. Such selfish 
desire gives little thought to the other except as 
a supplier of pleasure. Yet even in unselfish 
love there is apt to be resentment at any lack 
of inclination to respond when the other 
happens to be tired or thinking about some- 

124 



I 



LOVE AND BEAUTY 

thing else at the moment when what he or she 
could give is desired. Demands made during 
times of temporary fatigue and indiiference 
would impel the less selfish one to make an 
effort to respond and deliver what was wanted. 
But when effort comes into love play, it is time 
to stop. The effort to respond means that for 
the time being there is no response to give, and 
that a substitute is being attempted. But the 
substitute is soon detected, and then comes 
heartache and woimded pride. The occurrence 
of even one such an experience is a shock to the 
pair, especially to the more truly sensitive one. 
The lack of enthusiasm and of power to re- 
spond when demanded will tend to instill lack 
of confidence in one's self, particularly if it be 
the man. When that negative idea comes to 
a sensitive nature it often develops out of all 
proportion, and may even render one incapable 
of further responses to that other one. Polar- 
ization is then present. 

On the other hand, if the one, who for the 
moment craved demonstrative love, really and 
unselfishly loved, and had knowledge, the 

125 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

intuition of true love would be likely to sense 
that the beloved one was tired or preoccupied 
and would then at once and spontaneously 
turn the love current from desire for personal 
thrills into desire to give help or rest, even if 
that meant leaving the other entirely alone 
for the time being. 

Psychic shock and transference of love are 
taken up in detail elsewhete, also some further 
consideration of cessation of inspiration and of 
fatigue. To summarize, where one continues 
to love and the other ceases to love, there may 
be: 

1 . Loss of power in the former to inspire, 
due often to negligence of personal attractive- 
ness, irritating conduct, or other forms of self- 
ishness. 

2. Polarization in the latter from fatigue, 
the fatigue having at least five possible sources : 

(a) Exhaustion of the one common interest; 

(b) Obscuration of all other interests due to 
continuous intimacy plus double beds ; (c) Be- 
ing forced to live with tiresome relatives; (d) 
Economic stress and anxiety; (e) Sickness. 

126 



LOVE AND BEAUTY 

3. Psychic shock from some incident of 
conduct or expression which revolted or dis- 
gusted one of the pair. 

4. Transference of interest to another 
whose personahty seems to conform more to 
the ideal of the mate, or to the fetishes of the 
ideal. 

The one, who first notices the lack of interest 
in the other, must be the one to act — to use 
finesse; as it were, to play the other with a 
long line. It is suggested that women should 
be mindful of the two following points: (i) 
The woman, more than the man, is apt to 
cling closer, when she senses a slight cooling off 
of interest; and therefore it will be rather 
harder for her to use the advice just given. 
(2) Women, more generally than men, have 
preconceived notions of what love and mar- 
riage will be like, derived largely from the 
false and imaginary standards of popular 
novels. Therefore many women undoubtedly 
fall in love with Love, rather than with a 
particular man. 



127 



CHAPTER XI 

RIGHTS AND REALITIES 

The ceremony of marriage, or rather the con- 
tract, confers certain leg^l rights for mutual 
protection and for the protection of children. 
In most civilized States at the present time 
such rights or safeguards are in the main com- 
mendable. But it was different in times not 
so long passed, when woman was yet tmder 
male subjection, and when the laws made by 
men were made almost exclusively for men 
and the satisfaction of their desires. The old 
list of marital ''rights'' contained some items 
so amazingly stupid and brutal in our modern 
view as to seem incredible. Lest we forget, 
let' us mention a few of them. The man then 
had absolute legal right to the wife's body at all 
times, with or without her consent, and whether 
he was well or diseased, sober or drunk. A 

128 



RIGHTS AND REALITIES 

man had the legal right to any money and 
property of his wife, and to any money she 
might earn during intervals when he had de- 
serted her and their children. A man had the 
legal right to will his unborn child to any per- 
son he chose. A drunken or diseased man 
could actually summon police aid to force a 
''disobedient" wife to share his hed^ if she 
resisted his commands to that extent. And so 
on. 

The memories of such gross legal tyranny 
are like bad dreams now, and the fact that they 
were grim realities hardly one generation ago, 
and in the most enlightened countries, is one 
of the surest signs of the spiritual progress 
we are making, and of the rapid development 
of what Jane Addams calls commtmity con- 
science. 

The modem marriage contract usually in- 
cludes, in addition to the archaic promise of 
the wife to obey the husband, a mutual prom- 
ise or obligation to love and honor each other 
until they are parted by Death. The exaction 
of such promises implies the belief that emo- 
9 129 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

tions of love and of honor towards certain 
persons can be perpetuated by means of 
promises. Such assumptions show profoimd 
ignorance of psychology. The emotions of 
love, honor, reverence, gratitude, etc., are not 
matters of will or obligation, of deliberation or 
decision, but of inspiration; and the inspira- 
tion comes only from the presence in a person 
of the quaHties or attributes which call forth 
or evoke such feelings. Hence a promise to 
love and honor someone can hold only as long 
as the inspiration to love and honor endures. 
It is true, of course, that some persons have so 
prominent in them the capacity for under- 
standing and compassion that their general 
attitude is one of love toward all beings — the 
Christ-like attitude, in fact. To them ''there 
are no rights but only duties. ' ' They recognize 
in all, even in the most undeveloped, the spark 
of the Divine Life which is common to all and is 
the basis of sympathy and brotherhood; and 
they know that that Spark will bum always 
brighter as the dross of the lesser self is con- 
sumed. But this wider capacity for loving is 

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RIGHTS AND REALIl lES 

as yet developed in comparatively few. The 
rest of us are still dependent on definite kinds 
of inspiration for the expression of feelings of 
love, not to mention honor. Hence it is not 
only bad psychology but stupidly tmfair to 
require people at our level to love and honor 
someone until death or any other time. If 
the inspiration lasts, very well. But if it does 
not, then the promise cannot be kept. 

The answer to the burning question : ' ' How 
can I retain the love, the lover-like interest, of 
the one whose love I have, or had, and long to 
hold? " is found in the single word inspiration. 
The details will vary in every case, but the 
following suggestions may be helpful : 

(i) Retain, conserve, and wisely use those 
qualities or attributes in yourself which first 
attracted your lover. 

(2) Cut out any personal habits or manner- 
isms of your own which you have found bore 
or irritate your lover. You can easily detect 
and restrain them if you have sense and intui- 
tion and enough courage to look them in the 
face. 

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MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

(3) Never relax as to at least some amount 
of privacy; nor as to the most scrupulous at- 
tention to personal attractiveness and personal 
hygiene. ''Cleanliness is next to Godliness/' 

(4) Try to be interested in and companion- 
able to your lover in whatever he or she en- 
joys. You can usually do this without much 
effort, if you really love. 

(5) Never reproach or cdmplain of coldness 
or lack of enthusiasm and never demand 
attention or affection or, in plain language, 
sex-interest. That can never be had on de- 
mand but only by inspiration. To demand it 
only pushes it farther away. 

(6) Be a dynamic center of personal attrac- 
tion which can inspire interest and love from 
the opposite sex. You were that before, and 
if you are not now, it must be mostly your own 
fault. You know that when you were such a 
center you expressed, certainly in some de- 
gree, health, beauty, refinement, intelligence 
and adaptability. To these you should add, 
if you did not before, imselfishness and 
sincerity. 

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* 



RIGHTS AND REALITIES 

(7) Love for what you can give, and do not 
think of what you may get. If you really give 
out love, sincere, unselfish love, it will return 
to you as surely as the swing of the pendulum. 
Said a great Teacher: ''The man who re- 
noimces love will find it pouring back upon him 
in another form/' Said another: ''Of all 
the Qualifications, Love is the most important, 
for if it is strong enough in a man, it forces him 
to acquire all the rest, and all the rest without 
it would never be sufficient/' And the 
greatest of all Teachers said : ''Cast your bread 
on the waters and it will return to you after 
many days/' 

(8) With the aid of the greater experience 
and wisdom and love that you now have, 
strive always to perpetuate as far as practic- 
able the conditions which existed before mar- 
riage, in which romantic love was continuously 
present. 

(9) Realize that all developed personalities 
have many facets, many interests, many modes 
of self-expression; and that you may not be 
able to meet your beloved in all his or her 

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MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

interests. Therefore do not stand in the way of 
his or her enjoyment with someone else of that 
which you are not interested in ; and also use 
the same privilege for yourself in any deep 
interest which your mate cannot share with 
you, and which another can. 

Fundamental differences in sex ex- 
pression. Equality of the sexes — physical 
and mental, legal and political — is now con- 
ceded in all truly civilized countries. But for 
all that, human nature remains essentially the 
same. In the eternal sex play between man 
and woman certain modes of expression do not 
change. The man ever seeks the woman, and 
the woman ever attracts and waits for the 
man. This is the foundation of all romance. 
No amount of sex emancipation or sex equality 
can change the age-old method, and at the 
same time conserve romance. The most 
emancipated women, when physically normal, 
are usually the most essentially and delight- 
fully feminine, and they abhor the idea of 
taking the obvious initiative in love. A high- 
grade and normal man may find his vanity 

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RIGHTS AND REALITIES 

flattered if sought or pursued by women, but 
when it comes to marrying he usually prefers 
to do the courting himself. ''Figure to your- 
self, O man, a courtship absolutely undenied, 
from the first accepted, even encouraged, with 
complaisantly unresisting bride . . . ! How 
awfully dull ! Does not the stoutest heart quail 
at the suggestion? " That is the way Edward 
Carpenter feels about it. {The Drama of Love 
and Death J page 42.) 

Reverting to first principles, then, woman's 
part in romance is that of a center of attrac- 
tion, a magnet. To be consistent with that 
fact she cannot ask for the sex interest of 
men, but she may and can inspire it. The 
power to succeed in love, or rather to obtain 
the love of the person desired, is probably 
about equal in the sexes. The man's initiative 
and freedom of choice is at least balanced by 
the woman's magnetic attraction, and, in 
civilized coimtries, her physical freedom of 
choice. Thus in the end a woman has about 
the same chance of getting the man she wants, 
as a man has of winning the woman he desires 

135 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

— even though he can ask, while she can only 
attract and wait to be asked. 

In the deepest nature of things, then, the 
power to conserve romance after marriage is 
vested in the woman more than in the man. 
When both are relatively normal physically, 
mentally, and emotionally, the cause for any 
waning of the man's romantic love or sex 
interest (the two are identical) probably lies 
not so much in masculine fickleness or promis- 
cuity as in the wife's slacking off in her efforts 
to be as attractive as possible. To be sure, her 
task is somewhat harder as a wife than as a 
sweetheart. Her my stery is gone now, and she 
has to depend for her continued attractiveness 
on what she actually and intrinsically is. But 
' ' a thing of beauty is a joy forever, ' ' not merely 
poetically but literally, provided it is wisely 
conserved and not dulled and cheapened by 
neglect and obtuseness and the over-familiarity 
which may bring contempt. Discrimination 
and vigilance are incumbent on wives who 
would retain their husbands' romantic interest. 
And it cannot be too often reiterated that the 

136 



RIGHTS AND REALITIES 

surest way in which that can be done is by- 
maintaining a high standard of personal 
attractiveness. If they succeed in this, their 
husbands will then be inspired to do likewise, 
and such pairs, as married lovers, will have 
realized ''the world's desire." 

Some very noble women will say that this is 
bringing love down to a merely physical basis. 
So it is. But Nature, not man, has decreed it 
thus. Every kind of action and reaction must 
spring from and to a solid physical platform. 
Likewise the reaction of love must respond to 
the presence of beauty in a himian physical 
body; and beauty in this sense means health 
and harmony. Remember also that although 
a man may inspire a woman and bring out the 
best that is in her, it is nevertheless true and 
Nature's way that inspiration usually begins 
and ends in the woman. 

A husband's fancies or affinities for other 
women may develop merely because he finds 
in them, or thinks he does, the attraction 
which his wife formerly had. If the wife's 
present lack of attractiveness to him is due to 

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MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

her own neglect to maintain the high degree 
of personal magnetism and sweetness which 
brought him to her, then probably the fault 
is not so much his as hers. If she realizes this 
in time, and if his attitude toward her is merely 
one of passive and polarized indifference and 
not of active disillusionment from some 
psychic shock or tratmia, the wife may then 
recover the ground she has lost by restoring 
the conditions in herself which existed prior 
to marriage. In other words, she should try 
to make herself as attractive or more attractive 
than her rival. She has more than even 
chances of regaining her former position if she 
goes about it in this way. But she has no 
chance at all if she tries tears, reproaches, de- 
mands that he give up interest in the other 
woman, or catty criticism of her. 

There are several reasons why a wife's 
chances of regaining and reholding her hus- 
band's heart interest are greater than those of 
an affinity. First, there is the fact that their 
love resulted in marriage, which suggests that 
they have a strong bond of real sympathy 

138 



RIGHTS AND REALITIES 

between them, something that might become 
temporarily relaxed but could not easily be 
broken. 

Secondly, being already a wife in legal 
bonds, whom he had promised to love and 
cherish, is a strong appeal to the better nature 
of a true man, and also to his honor as a 
gentleman. 

Thirdly, the wife's personal attractiveness 
is not lost but temporarily obscured, more 
or less from her own carelessness and neglect. 
After so severe a lesson she is not likely to 
drift into the same negligence again. 

Fourthly, the husband's lapse was not so 
much transference of his deep heart interest 
as a compensatory emotional outlet. The 
wife's personal negligence had so polarized 
her that she was for the time being no longer 
a channel or magnet or inspiration for emo- 
tions of love and beauty. Hence when the 
husband met a radiant woman who could 
inspire him, his damned-up emotions involim- 
tarily responded to her in a lover-like way. 
And thus a meeting, which normally would 

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MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

have inspired merely admiration, now inspires 
a love affair. 

Fifthly, every successful wife has as part of 
her equipment a certain amoimt of finesse. 
By finesse I do not mean in the smallest degree 
deception, which is the connotation the word 
has to many people, but a kind of super-tact 
or adaptability, or perhaps better still, a 
graciousnesSy which tells her just what to do 
at every time and place, and just how to do it. 
Its practical aspect is that women who have 
it have far greater power to hold men's inter- 
est than women who lack it, even though the 
latter may be quite as good looking or more so, 
and also perhaps superior and nobler. 

What was said in the last paragraph is not 
intended to put finesse above frankness. Both 
are modes of expression, virtues to be culti- 
vated, but their good use requires discrimina- 
tion. Frankness without discrimination may 
be inept, stupid, or cruel. Finesse avoids all 
that, but on certain occasions where frankness 
in indicated its use then becomes a part of 
finesse. Finesse never wounds, irritates, or 

140 



RIGHTS AND REALITIES 

Jars. Frankness often does, particularly when 
used in criticism or to tell people of their faults. 
Practically the distinction conies to this: 
When two courses of right action are open to 
us, we should endeavor to choose the one 
which best promotes peace, harmony, and 
happiness for all concerned. 

In the July, 1921, mmiber of Photo-Play 
Magazine there is an interview with Rupert 
Hughes, having the startling title , ' 'Is Marriage 
a Bimco Game?'' After severely scoring the 
usual procedure in cotirtship, which is to hide 
all defects and incompatibilities and show 
only the best side of each lover, Mr. Hughes 
sttmmarizes his ideas thus: ''Let cotutship 
become a period not of rosy deceit but of 
honest trial acquaintance/' No one can ignore 
the common sense in that statement. But 
there is another and perhaps wider view of the 
whole situation that may be worth looking at. 

It is admitted, of course, that no one is 
always agreeable, always good-tempered, al- 
ways magnetic or always inspiring. We all 
have our lapses, oiu: irritating faults, moods, 

141 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

and mannerisms. During courtship we man- 
age to conceal most of that ; we do not obtrude 
our unattractive phases on our friends or 
lovers or sweethearts. And the universal 
experience is that as long as we succeed in not 
obtruding those phases, we are happy and we 
give happiness! Is there not a practical and 
wholesome lesson in those results? Let us see. 

If 'Hhe purpose of philosophy is the end of 
pain," then to achieve happiness is going a 
long way in that direction. Happiness that is 
mutual, and deprives no one else, cannot be 
otherwise than good. And therefore the prac- 
tical lesson from courtship is: Not to obtrude 
our faults on our husbands or wives; not to 
show them all our defects ; not to tell them of 
all our past bad or foolish actions; in short, 
not to get too well acquainted as to oiu: lower 
natures after marriage. 

So when nothing but good results from it, 
why not do our best to keep up the innocent 
camouflage that hides what is still disagreeable 
in us? People make the efforts and succeed 
and are happy before marriage. Why not try 

142 



RIGHTS AND REALITIES 

to keep up a permanent concealment of our 
defects from our loved ones, and thus keep 
between us a permanent attractiveness? There 
is no more obligation to show our worst side 
after marriage than before; nor to tell other 
people what we think are their faults. 

Of course I do not mean for an instant that 
anyone has a moral right to conceal from the 
future mate some definite mental or physical 
defect, such as hereditary insanity or mental 
defect, or physical malformation or disease; 
that would be unpardonable. I mean only 
such imlovable phases of our emotional na- 
tures as we have not yet brought under control, 
but hope to some day. 

There is no actual deceit in such an attitude ; 
but merely determination not to yield to 
negative impulses of our lower natures in pres- 
ence of our loved ones, and therefore the estab- 
lishment of high standards of conduct that 
shall be permanent. We succeeded in sup- 
pressing our disagreeable impulses during 
courtship ; or rather we in large part transmuted 
them into higher forms of energy We can 

143 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

continue the process during marriage, and 
though it may be harder because more time is 
spent together, the hahit of agreeableness can 
be consciously kept up until it becomes auto- 
matic, and therefore established. 

It will be helpful to keep in mind that the 
disagreeable expressions of our personalities 
are not deep emotional urges which need 
outlets, but mostly bad habits of conduct, 
automatic reactions developed largely through 
faulty training in childhood. Consequently 
their repeated suppression by the will does not 
drive them back into the Unconscious but 
eventually kills them out. So much stronger 
in Nature is the evolutionary urge towards 
good that all bad habits cease to function if 
their expressions are restrained for a certain 
time. The reform processes are greatly ac- 
celerated if the expedient of transmutation is 
used, and good habits deliberately substituted 
for bad ones. 



144 



CHAPTER XII 

CONTINENCE AND FIDELITY 

Most writers on sexology, when discussing 
continence, confine themselves to its anatomi- 
cal and physiological aspects. It will be con- 
sidered herein mostly from the standpoint of 
its psychology. 

The psychology of the general medical 
attitude toward continence is interesting main- 
ly because of its contrasts. In discussing the 
subject with young or well-preserved medical 
men of middle age I have found the concensus of 
opinion to be that strict continence is abnormal, 
and therefore sometimes harmful. On the 
other hand, middle-aged and elderly physicians, 
including authorities on sex and sanitation, 
decide that sexual indulgence is not neces- 
sary to health, and therefore that continence is 
entirely feasible and merely a matter of will 

145 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

power. Also, in their view, sexual indulgence 
outside of marriage being unnecessary to 
health, and having in it danger of infection 
and of illegitimate offspring, is a menace to 
public health and public morality, and there- 
fore should be condemned as perverse and 
selfish. Such are the general verdicts of the 
two medical groups. 

The difference in opinion held by each group 
of medical men, the younger and the older, 
demonstrates that both groups look at con- 
tinence from different positions, one from that 
of youth, the other from age; and that their 
respective attitudes merely reflect the feelings, 
the emotional rhythms, of youth and of age in 
their aggregates. In short, the general psy- 
chology of the subject is ignored, and the 
subject itself is regarded and judged from view- 
points of longevity. 

Max Huhner is an example of authorities 
who leave out psychology in dealing with con- 
tinence. In his recent and in the main ex- 
cellent book. Disorders of the Sexual Function, 
in the chapter on Continence, page 261, he 

146 



CONTINENCE AND FIDELITY 

says: ''In the following pages I shall endeavor 
to prove that continence is not detrimental to 
health, considered either from a physiological 
or psychological standpoint/' He then fol- 
lows with a long discussion of continence from 
physiological and neurological standpoints, 
citing with particular emphasis opinions of 
certain older neurologists, but ends the chapter 
without a word on the psychology of the sub- 
ject. There is a long bibliography at the end 
of the book, which, however, omits the names 
of Freud, Jung, and other authorities on 
psychoanalysis. To ignore the findings of 
psychoanalysis in a modem discussion of con- 
tinence is to disregard at least one half of the 
subject, and stamps the chapter as either old- 
fashioned or prejudiced, but in either case 
incomplete and inconclusive. 

Dr. Huhner takes occasion to severely criti- 
cize another writer. Von Schrenck-Notzing, 
for advising indulgence in certain cases, to- 
gether with prophylactic instructions against 
infection and illegitimate offspring. Referring 
to the last two words, Huhner says: ''The 

147 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

prevention of illegitimate offspring leads us 
into the realms of criminality, and such a 
statement ought not to be tolerated in any 
legitimate monograph ! ' ' Huhner's display 
of conventional indignation in this matter 
suggests that he is not open to any considera- 
tions involving intelligent birth control, or 
practical prevention of venereal disease based 
on existing conditions. 

It appears to be well established that strict 
physical continence can be maintained indefi- 
nitely, provided that the sexual or creative 
energy is transformed into other modes of 
energy, in which the interest is concentrated. 
But it can be stated just as definitely that un- 
less the mental and emotional interests are 
actively satisfied by the substitution, conti- 
nence may then cause repression of sexual en- 
ergy into the unconscious, where it works in 
secret, revealing itself to trained eyes in many 
symbolic ways, among them the protean as- 
pects of hysteria and neuroses, and some forms 
of insanity. 

Continence, therefore, may or may not be 

148 



CONTINENCE AND FIDELITY 

detrimental to health, depending on the psy- 
chological status of each case individually. 
It is a personal matter, and in matters of sex 
all cultured people must be a law unto them- 
selves. The ethics of the subject must rest, 
not on formulas of conduct, but on considera- 
tions of equity and of expediency. The most 
that can reasonably be done is to suggest 
courses of action that in individual cases have 
seemed to work for good. From this broad 
platform, then, it is advised that in heart 
attachments between married people and 
others, continence be the rule. The reasons 
for this conclusion are taken from different 
angles of the subject. 

(i) In the first place comes the question of 
fidelity to the married partner, and what fidel- 
ity means. The ideal of monogamy has 
gradually been adopted by all progressive na- 
tions, and against Man's natural polygamous 
tendency. That fact speaks for itself, and 
indicates the true course of progressive social 
evolution. A true monogamy includes fidelity 
to the marriage vows, and therefore married 

149 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

virtue would appear to be an essential of right 
social evolution. 

(2) Few people are emancipated enough to 
calmly contemplate the thought of sharing 
their husbands or wives sexually with others. 
Hence such licence by one causes suffering to 
the other. The only way to have the indul- 
gence and not cause suffering is to use secrecy. 
Secrecy invariably leads to deception, and 
deception is violation of one of the three 
eternal principles — Truth. To be untruthful 
is to lose self-respect; and to lose that is the 
beginning of general deterioration. 

(3) The complete physical union is such a 
profotmdly personal thing, so completely and 
even terribly intimate, that unless both are 
wonderfully attuned — physically, mentally, 
emotionally — the union may fall short of the 
ideal union that was anticipated; and then 
comes more or less disillusionment. To be 
thus disillusioned is very regrettable because 
it means that something precious has been 
lost in what before had seemed an ideal asso- 
ciation. A strong and controlled friendship 

150 



CONTINENCE AND FIDELITY 

between a man and woman may be a source of 
imdreamed-of inspiration and mutual better- 
ment, as history shows. So why risk such a 
divine thing by straining it to its physical 
limits? By exposing it to the perhaps scorch- 
ing flame of passion, when it already irradiates 
two lives with happiness? 

(4) Finally, should disillusionment result, 
it would only serve to emphasize the tmpleas- 
ant consciousness of wrong done in breaking 
the marriage vows, and in the secrecy and 
deception involved. Thus what had been a 
beautiful and even ennobHng love when kept 
within certain restraints might destroy itself 
by yielding to passion which disregarded the 
happiness of others. 

Fidelity 

The usual understanding of the word fidelity 
in marriage is physical faithfulness to the 
wedded mate. Furthermore, physical fidelity 
is commonly regarded as the most important 
and essential of all the obligations of marriage. 

151 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

Proof of its infraction is an immediate cause for 
the granting of divorce in the laws of nearly all 
States, and it is the only cause for separation 
recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. 

Mental fidelity or heart fidelity, while con- 
ceded to be a duty and important for happi- 
ness, is nevertheless thought of as quite 
secondary to physical fidelity. These are the 
ordinary or conventional ideas as to fidelity. 

To many people, however, there occurs the 
question: Is mere physical fidelity so all- 
essential, if the heart is no longer there? If 
the thought and feelings are with another, is 
not the mere bodily faithfulness little more 
than the empty shell? — the clothing instead of 
the one beloved? Even a dead body may be 
beautiful, but what is it worth without a soul? 
Indeed, for those who accept the Bible as 
authority the question is definitely settled in 
those words attributed to our Lord in which 
He gives the heart equal significance with the 
body when a man looks on a woman with 
desire. 

There is one other commonly accepted view 

152 



CONTINENCE AND FIDELITY 

about fidelity, or rather infidelity. It is that 
when a married man loves another woman, or 
a married woman loves another man, the 
respective wife or husband is neglected or 
treated cruelly. In many such instances the 
reverse is what happens. I will mention two 
examples : 

A well-known artist friend had a beautiful 
wife and child. He treated them with solici- 
tous care and affection, and his wife admitted 
that in his conduct to her he was not only 
always courteous and attentive, but also lover- 
like, and spent nearly every night at home with 
her. Their married life, in fact, was ideal, until 
one day she happened to discover that he had 
an affair with another woman. The wife 
reacted in the usual way. The man admitted 
the affair and frankly said that his tempera- 
ment sometimes responded to other women 
sexually, but that she, his wife, held his only 
real heart interest; that she was the only 
woman he wished to be the mother of his 
children; in short, that other and lesser loves 
were as nothing to him in his heart. He asked 

153 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

if she had anything to complain of in his con- 
duct to her, sexually and otherwise, and she 
was obliged to admit that he had been a per- 
fect husband. But she could not endure the 
knowledge that other women shared, even 
momentarily, his physical interest. She was 
wildly jealous, sued for and obtained a divorce 
— and has regretted it ever since. 

In the other example a foreign friend said, 
''My wife has been so tmusually loving and 
attentive lately that I am almost sure she has 
a lover.'' I was surprised, and asked why he 
considered such ideal wifely conduct as symp- 
toms of infidelity. He replied, ''It is always 
that way when they love someone else." This 
was somewhat of a new view to an American, 
and I put it down to a curious expression of 
Latin jealousy. However, when I saw him 
later on he reminded me of our last conversa- 
tion and said, "I was right in my suspicion. 
She has confessed it to me.'' 

Many similar cases imdoubtedly occur 
among developed and versatile people. The 
ordinary and superficial judgment of their 

154 



CONTINENCE AND FIDELITY 

kindness and loving care to their legal mates 
while at the same time loving others, is that it 
is all hypocrisy. But there may be a broader 
view, which is that when the emotional urges 
have normal and adequate expression, the 
entire nature and conduct are the better for it ; 
and that people then actually radiate more 
love and kindness and good will than when 
tmder unnatural restraint through a channel 
which is inadequate, perhaps only temporarily, 
to transmit the tide of creative energy which 
strives for outlet. 

This view agrees with the experience of 
Forel when he gave certain advice to married 
men who had lost romantic interest in their 
wives but found it in other women. Forel's 
advice was to think strongly of the other 
woman, to visualize her, as clearly as possible, 
when with their wives ; in short, to imagine the 
wife as being the other loved woman. Some 
women who have read this advice have indig- 
nantly condemned it as being a cheat and im- 
position on wives. Their feeling is natural and 
the method at first thought seems unethical. 

155 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 



11 



Forel assures us that it often restores men*s 
lost sexual interest in their wives, and that 
happy result might be deemed to justify the 
psychic deception in the method employed. 

The psychology of this appears to be as 
follows: When married people have become 
polarized, neither can be the outlet for the 
other's emotional energy. But when by the 
force of thought — and thought is a force — the 
polarized loved one is for the time being trans- 
formed into the likeness of an ^wpolarized 
loved one, she then at once becomes a channel 
for the other's love force. Actually, for the 
time and to the husband, the wife is the other 
woman. It is as if he had gone away for 
awhile. And this separation in thought has 
an effect on man and wife like separation in 
space. Both become depolarized towards 
each other, and presently they find that they 
are again lovers. 

Women who would feel jealous of other 
women in such cases might try to look at the 
proposition something like this: The separa- 
tion in thought, which brought about their 

156 



CONTINENCE AND FIDELITY 

mutual rest and recuperation and restored 
them to each other's arms, could not have 
taken place but for the thought-image of the 
other woman in the mind of the man. The 
happy mutual result of that spiritual separa- 
tion is due to the temporary inspiration of the 
thought-form of the other. In short, both man 
and wife owe their reunion to that woman, 
who, her beneficent mission fulfilled, leaves 
the pair to their joy. The ''other woman,'' 
then, instead of being hated as a rival or love 
pirate, should be regarded more as an angel 
of happiness. 

In any case, the Forel method supplies the 
element of physical fidelity, which to many 
means possession and morality. It would 
amoimt to fidelity in conventional society and 
in legal definition, and therefore we may define 
it as vicarious fidelity. (See Forel, in the 
Sexual Question, probably the most masterly 
work on that subject.) 

It is recognized that the ideal marriage 
postulates a man and woman whose sex inter- 
ests are centered in and entirely satisfied by 

157 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

each other. Frankness compels us to say that 
such ideal unions are not the rule but probably 
the exception. Moreover, having analyzed 
the causation of sexual interest, we have found 
that all interest, sexual and otherwise, de- 
pends on inspiration; that inspiration and its 
responses are natural phenomena, and there- 
fore involuntary. ''Love is sex love,'' says 
Michels {Sexual Ethics), and that appears to 
be true of all love or affection between men and 
women, even with love in its milder form as 
admiration. Every man admires every beauti- 
ful woman involuntarily; not merely because 
of her beauty, but because of beauty plus sex. 
Woman's beauty means to Man the beauty of 
her sex. Hence the involuntary admiration of 
every normal man for every attractive woman 
is sex interest. 

A superficial reading of this chapter may 
possibly connote to some a defense of free love. 
It is nothing of the kind; merely a. frank state- 
ment of certain facts as they are instead of as 
they should he^ with suggestions for the inter- 
pretation of their psychology. The trouble is 

158 



CONTINENCE AND FIDELITY 

that many people have not the moral courage 
to look at such facts when they have personal 
application in their own cases. And yet only 
in the facing of the facts lies the hope, the 
promise, of redemption from their bondage. 

Undeveloped individuals respond automati- 
cally and physically to sex attraction, as do 
the animals. Developed individuals also 
respond automatically, but having more de- 
velopment of will and conscience they can 
restrain the physical part of the response to a 
greater or lesser extent. Social conventions 
are in the main the unconscious expressions 
of evolutionary racial needs, and preeminently 
so the convention that demands sex restraint. 
Self-control in sex is the measure of men and 
of nations, and is ftirther discussed in the 
chapter on Monogamy and Progress. 



159 



CHAPTER XIII 

PSYCHOANALYSIS 

The profound extent to which thought is 
colored and influenced by sex is demonstrated 
by many outward signs. ^In the first place, 
what people talk about they think about. 
Considerations of custom or tact usually pre- 
vent open talk on intimate sexual matter in 
polite social gatherings. But as soon as the 
restraints are removed, the conversation nearly 
always veers around to sex. When people get 
to know each other well enough to lower the 
barriers of reserve, somehow sex seems to be 
an easy subject to talk about; which means 
that sex thought is interesting to most people. 
The most popular books and plays are those 
known to major the sex element. There are 
very few successful books or plays without at 
least something of love or sex in them. Even 
the powerful and unique Dr, Jekyl and Mr. 

1 60 



PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Hyde had to have a love episode added when 
it was put on the stage ; and as a matter of fact 
it did add dramatic force and interest to the 
play. A thrilling exception is Lord Dimsany's 
A Night at an Inn, But imagine a grand opera 
without love scenes ! 

When all other signs of tmiversal sex interest 
have been noted and listed, the most convinc- 
ing of all signs is the remarkable interest now 
shown in books on psychoanalysis. Why 
should that be so when psychoanalysis is 
merely a development of analytic psychology? 
Why is psychoanalysis so much more popular 
than straight psychology? Why do even com- 
monplace books on psychoanalysis outsell a 
really valuable book like William James' 
Shorter Course in Psychology? Simply because 
psychology appeals only to the intellect, while 
psychoanalysis appeals also to the emotions, 
and particularly to emotions inspired from 
sex considerations. There is the answer. 
People who would have been bored to death 
by a book on psychology, find psychoanalysis 
interesting reading. 

II i6i 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

Unquestionably psychoanalysis throws a 
new light on the entire sexual question. But 
many of its students have, it seems to me, 
gone too far with the sex hypothesis and think 
they find sex thought in almost every naanifes- 
tation of consciousness. There are three 
reasons for this over-determination towards 
sex: (i) the personal influence of the leading 
authorities; (2) the kind of material studied; 
(3) their own personal bias. 

(i) The personal influence of the leading 
authorities. The great pioneers, and after 
them others, are apparently one and all materi- 
alists, who disdain any spiritual conceptions 
or belief in survival of personality after death 
of the body. Having that attitude they would 
naturally incline to interpret even the highest 
emotions in terms of materialism; and there- 
fore love in their view is only a libidinous 
reaction. It should be stated, however, that 
Jung and the Zurich School differ somewhat 
with Freud and do not apply the sex hy- 
pothesis as far as he does. 

(2) The kind of material studied. Natur- 

162 



PSYCHOANALYSIS 

ally this is taken very largely from the type of 
persons who seek treatment for nervous and 
mental conditions; in short, abnormal people, 
often inferiors, whose loose and disjointed 
thought certainly does turn mostly aroimd the 
pivot of sex differences. 

(3) Their own personal bias. If that is 
strongly in the direction of sex they would 
then derive a kind of vicarious satisfaction 
from wallowing in the common cesspool of 
gross sex thought, and by finding and describ- 
ing in others the hidden sex complexes which 
they more or less frankly recognize as the 
echoes of their own. 

The most startling and fantastic erection of 
the Freudian School is the so-called ''(Edipus 
Complex." This is a rather far-fetched appli- 
cation of the CEdipus myth to supposed inces- 
tuous tendencies in children towards their 
parents. A useful symbol when tmder stood, 
the QEdipus Complex has developed into a true 
fetish in the minds of many students of 
psychoanalysis, who have overworked and mis- 
applied it in many instances. The best explan- 

163 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

ation of it that I have read is that by Jelliff e in 
his The Technique of Psychoanalysis ^ an able 
work in every way, clear and sequential in its 
presentation, masterly in its style, and with 
apt quotations from the leading authorities. 
It may be said of psychoanalysis, as of other 
new methods of real value, that its worst 
enemies are its immature and ''overdeter- 
mined'' followers. ^ 

Regrettable examples are seen in the exces- 
sively bad taste shown by those who in public 
''analyze'' the characters of honored and be- 
loved celebrities through their autobiographies. 
A recent and singularly offensive instance, in 
book form, claimed to analyze Margaret 
Fuller. If the printed quotations are correct, 
the author's so-called analysis would appear to 
be based on the common misinterpretation of 
the CEdipus Complex derived from literal and 
inept translations of Freud and others. The 
writer should first have read Jelliffe's 
interpretation. 

Naturally every adaptable and useful hu- 
man being — I do not use the hypothetical 

164 



PSYCHOANALYSIS 

term ''normar* in this connection — has a 
positive sex side to his or her nature ; and there- 
fore all books may express some of their 
authors' sexual natures to true psychoanalysts. 
But to use that knowledge to pry into the 
intimate secrets of people living or dead — 
imless they be malefactors or public nuisances 
— is on a par with opening private mail or 
spying in bedrooms through keyholes. 

In spite of its grossly materialistic trend — 
tmder the leadership of pioneers who are 
materialists — psychoanalysis represents a tre- 
mendous and truly epochal advance in psy- 
chology. Furthermore, its practical value as a 
cm^ative or corrective measure in certain 
neurotic and hysterical conditions has passed 
the experimental stage. But like most new 
and brilliant therapeutic methods, the claims 
put forward were extravagant, and psycho- 
analysis did not prove to be the panacea it was 
at first thought to be. Probably its most 
important end-result will be its influence on 
modem thought. The subject is so large and 
ramifies so extensively into almost every phase 

165 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

of consciousness that only a glance at some of 
its most prominent features can be taken here. 
The first in importance is : 

The Unconscious. Many people are incredu- 
lous at the statement that the consciousness 
which expresses itself through the physical 
brain is quite the smallest part of one's total 
consciousness. Yet that is in a sense true. 
The largest part of consciousness is submerged 
and unrealized, and therefore unconscious to 
the outer brain consciousness. For this reason 
it is called the Unconscious mind. Deep in 
this submerged part of consciousness are all 
memories in absolute perfection of everything 
in the personal experience; mmierous hidden 
desires; obscure and unsuspected motives for 
action. The bearing of all that stress in the 
Unconscious on conduct and action in waking 
life is enormous. But a very important thing 
to realize is that the quality of thought of the 
tinconscious mind is different from that of the 
waking or conscious mind. Its thinking pro- 
cesses are primitive, childish, archaic. It can 
only think deductively, and is subjective to 

i66 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

hypnotism and to auto-suggestion. It is en- 
tirely unmoral, and is quite ruthless in the 
means it would employ to obtain the fulfill- 
ment of its desires. All intense emotional 
longings that cannot be satisfied in the waking 
consciousness are shunted into the Uncon- 
scious, and there elaborated or dramatized 
into wish fulfillments by ruthless and destruc- 
tive means which the conscience of the waking 
consciousness would never think of employing. 
In sum, the Unconscious is the realm of primi- 
tive desire. 

The old belief that an illicit and therefore 
*' wicked'' love could and should be crushed 
and killed out by force of will and awakened 
conscience, is refuted by psychoanalysis. Deep 
emotional interests are never killed out by such 
efforts; they are merely driven out of sight 
below the threshold and into the imconscious, 
where, unseen and more or less imsuspected, 
they continue to live and grow, prof oimdly in- 
fluencing the entire personality. 

The only way to deal with such emotions 
constructively is to face them in the open, 

167 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

to analyze them, and then to heroically dis- 
card any longings that are distinctly selfish 
and whose fulfillment would hurt others or 
cause them sorrow. Yet quite as frankly one 
should hold to and cherish whatever there is of 
unselfish love in his or her heart, and to what- 
ever in the other one is good or beautiful, 
ennobling or inspiring. 

Psychic Energy. Each personality expresses 
itself in terms of vital energy, or has a definite 
output of energy, which normally expresses 
itself through the three aspects of Conscious- 
ness: Cognition, Emotion, VoHtion; or know- 
ing, feeling, and willing; which transposed into 
lower terms are : Thought and reason ; Desire ; 
and Action. A part of the energy that ex- 
presses itself in action, but only a part, goes in 
the direction of reproduction or re-creation, 
the passing onward of the life of the race, 
showing forth as love of the opposite sex and 
desire for union, and love for children. The 
creative urge may also manifest as desire to 
create in other ways — science, invention, art, 
music, writing, acting, and so on. Where the 

i68 



PSYCHOANALYSIS 

environment is tinfortunately inimical to the 
normal expression of the great creative urges 
the psychic energy will then, in normal cases, 
flow outward through other normal channels. 
But sometimes, where the dominant desires 
are thwarted and cannot work themselves out 
through other normal channels, something else 
happens. The psychic energy acctmiulates, 
dams up, as it were, and overflows after a time 
through abnormal channels. The outward 
signs of this abnormal and destructive process 
are the protean symptoms and complaints of 
neurotic and hysterical persons ; psychopathic 
tendencies, as certain insanities and perver- 
sions; inefficiency in their imcongenial occupa- 
tions; and disturbance of the bodily ftmctions 
of assimilation, nutrition, and elimination; 
also, though more rarely, the curious phenome- 
non of double personality. 

Dream Signification. According to the pre- 
sent authorities on psychoanalysis, all dreams 
signify fulfillments of wishes in the imcon- 
scious part of our consciousness. I accept this 
only in part, as I know from personal experi- 

169 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

ences and the experiences of others that some 
dreams are much more, and some much less, 
than that. However, it seems to be estabHshed 
beyond argtmient that the majority of dreams 
are expressions of wish-fulfillments in the Un- 
conscious, certainly for people of average 
development. The Unconscious, being as 
already said unmoral and ruthless in its de- 
sires, works them out in detail and dramatizes 
their complete fulfillment, without regard to 
conventions or considerations of right or 
wrong. But when it tries to project them into 
the waking brain consciousness it encounters a 
kind of reluctance or resistance which is based 
largely on habitual considerations of conven- 
tion or propriety,' when the dream episodes 
violate them. And then comes into operation 
another factor of very great importance which 
is called 

The Censor. This is a kind of psychic me- 
chanism which stands on guard at the gate 
of the waking consciousness and modifies or 
censors the dream episodes into forms which 
are presentable or in conformity with conven- 

170 



PSYCHOANALYSIS 

tional standards. In order to do this the 
Censor resorts to such means as sjrmboHsra, 
distortion, inversion, and often complete obHt- 
eration of dream memory. It frequently makes 
use of similar thought association tracks of the 
preceding day, though sometimes it also uses 
old and forgotten memories long buried in the 
depths of the Unconscious. 

Examples in point are dreams of deaths of 
relatives. When analyzed according to 
Freud's system, such dreams often reveal 
subconscious wishes for deaths of relatives 
because their deaths would remove obstacles 
standing in the way of fulfillment of desires in 
the Unconscious. Lest this statement should 
come as a shock to many people who have had 
such dreams, it will be well to reiterate that the 
imconscious part of us is the realm of unquali- 
fied desire, which is therefore unmoral and 
ruthless, and which often escapes from control 
of the higher self in sleep. 

Dreams which refer to fulfillment of desires 
in the Unconscious having imconventional 
sex elements in them are often symbolized 

171 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

very elaborately, as by hard wearying tasks, 
frantic efforts to catch trains, climbing steep 
stairways, pursuit by wild boars or bulls, 
bites by serpents, wounds by sharp instru- 
ments, and trampling under foot by horses. 
But dream symbolism varies for individuals, 
and to such an extent that it would appear to 
be impossible to write a dream book which 
could apply very accurately to all dreamers. 

Rationalization. Most of us are in the habit 
of believing that our actions and general con- 
duct are, as a rule, dictated by conscious rea- 
son and judgment. Psychoanalysis indicates 
that the reverse is what usually happens; 
that our actions and conduct, where emotion 
is strongly involved, are motivated by imcon- 
scious desires and impulses. Afterwards, in 
order to justify ourselves, we think out reasons 
which should have impelled us, and actually 
make ourselves believe that they did. A 
little honest and fearless self-examination will 
convince anyone that we often do this. Dis- 
paraging or hostile criticism often exhibits 
rationalization to an extreme degree. Good 

172 



PSYCHOANALYSIS 

examples are found in the bitter criticism of 
Richard Wagner by three contemporary com- 
posers. One of them, a certain Doctor Hans- 
lick, tried to prove specifically that Wagner's 
works could never succeed because they dis- 
regarded certain conventional musical forms, 
notably 4-measure phrasing. Hanslick com- 
posed eight operas, of which not even the 
names are now remembered. Wagner pro- 
duced eleven great operas, of which nine are 
world-famous. Anton Rubinstein, a truly 
great instrtimental composer, criticized Wag- 
ner so violently and bitterly as to leave no 
doubt that the emotion he displayed came 
from jealousy because of complete lack of suc- 
cess with his ntmierous and ambitious operatic 
compositions. Camille Saint-Saens, the com- 
poser of one successful opera, stigmatized 
Wagner's nine successful operas as *' inferior 
work." And so on. 

Contrast. Allied to rationalization is a 
peculiar subconscious defensive attitude as- 
sumed when certain dominant tendencies are 
in conflict with conventional conduct, or for 

173 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

any other reasons remain unsatisfied. In this 
class belong all attitudes of exaggerated moral- 
ity or prudery: Virtuous but entirely un- 
attractive women sexually who are shocked at 
garments that outline a roimded breast or 
display graceful legs; ministers of the gospel 
who preach with obvious emotion against 
bathing suits that show knees and elbows; 
modest reformers who drap^ statues and apply 
fig leaves; wallflowers who see immorality in 
dancing. In all of these, and many others of 
their ilk, psychoanalysis will easily find a 
hidden or subconscious attraction for the 
things they outwardly condemn, and bitter 
subconscious envy of those who are in posi- 
tions to enjoy what they cannot. An example 
of that emotionally starved type of individual 
was the late notorious and ridiculous Anthony 
Comstock, who spent the latter years of his 
Hfe in draping statues, hunting pornographic 
pictures, and lecturing on ''fig leaf morality.'* 
See reference to Comstock in Psychoanalysis 
and Behavior, Andre Tridon. 

Hysteria and Neuroses. As concerns this 

174 



PSYCHOANALYSIS 

book, by far the most important phases of 
personahty that psychoanalysis throws its 
searchHght on are the abnormal conditions 
known as hysteria and the neuroses. Hysteria 
is most common in women, and the neuroses 
in men. A long series of investigations by 
many observers seems to have confirmed 
Freud's original statement that in most cases 
(though not in all) there exists a sex basis. It 
would take too long to go into that here, except 
to say that the dreams of hystericals and 
neurotics, interpreted by psychoanalytic meth- 
ods, usually reveal the sexual complexes at 
the bottom of their troubles. The demonstra- 
tion of the correctness of this theory is seen in 
the results of treatment in logical accordance 
with it. The principle involved is this : When 
subconscious motives of action and conduct are 
brought to the attention of the conscious mind, 
the abnormal actions and symbolic dreams 
cease. Beneficial results have been obtained 
in enough cases to verify the statement just 
made. But there remains a considerable min- 
ority whose members are not so benefited. 

175 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

The determining factor in psychoanalytic 
treatment in a certain case — where it will suc- 
ceed or fail — is the presence or absence of 
sufficient will power in the patient. In other 
words, to drag the hidden and unconscious 
cause of a neurosis or hysteria into the outer 
consciousness will effect a permanent cure 
only if the patient has enough resolution to 
dominate it; otherwise ther^ can be only tem- 
porary improvement followed by a relapse. 
Here is an example of successful treatment : 

An hysterial married woman, young, hand- 
some, intelligent, refined, and somewhat pru- 
dish, was tactfully advised by her physician to 
consult Dr. Brill. She was merely told that 
he was a specialist on nervous diseases. She 
promised to see him soon, but in the interim 
she told a woman friend about it. The friend 
looked surprised, and advised her not to see 
Dr. Brill as he only treated sexual cases. The 
patient was shocked, and realized that her 
family doctor must have thought that her 
trouble was sex when he sent her to Dr. Brill. 
It was a blow to her modesty and prudery, 

176 



PSYCHOANALYSIS 

but also a fillip to her pride. She did not go 
to Dr. Brill, but her hysterical symptoms dis- 
appeared and she become a normal woman 
again. 

The successful result in this case is more in- 
structive and significant than if the patient had 
actually consulted the famous psychoanalyst 
and come imder his personal influence. The 
unconscious sex complex was revealed in- 
directly when she realized that she had been 
advised to consult a ''sex specialist/' as her 
friend called Dr. Brill. What is emphasized is 
the correctness of the idea in psychoanalytic 
treatment, which is to make the patient 
understand himself or herself. 

Reiterating what was said in a preceding 
paragraph, the success of psychoanalytic treat- 
ment with hysterical women depends on their 
having sufficient will power to dominate their 
Unconscious, once they are brought face to 
face with it. But the sad thing about it all is 
that the conditions which first caused the 
trouble still remain, in most cases, and may 

later on bring about a relapse. The only sure 
II 177 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

hope of permanent cure must depend on the 
removal of the first cause, the correction of the 
fundamental error. 

Psychoanalysis has done much good, for it 
has demonstrated that the first cause in hy- 
steria usually lies in some maladjustment or 
inharmony in the sex life of the pair. But the 
most it could do was to putjthe patient in the 
position of one forewarned and therefore fore- 
armed. It could point out but not remove or 
locate the cause of the danger. At best it 
could only put up a kind of stockade, and from 
that stockade of knowledge plus will power, 
maintain a constant defense. But beyond the 
fact that it was somehow sex, it could not 
solve the problem of the first cause because it 
did not know what it was. 

That knowledge is now, we believe, at hand, 
for very many cases, and with it the remedy. 
It is the knowledge of the fact of the rhythmic 
sexual cycle in women, and the regulation of 
married life in accordance with it. ''For 
marriage is fundamentally a sexual union, and 
its success or failure, all things considered, is 

178 



PSYCHOANALYSIS 

largely determined by conditions arising from 
the actual problems of sex/'" 

Greek philosophy simimed up in three words 
everything worth while and enduring in the 
Universe — the Good, the True, and the Beau- 
tiful. Frankness is another word for Truth, 
Modem medical treatment trends always more 
and more away from drugs and towards mental 
and emotional readjustments. More than 
that, those readjustments are accomplished 
not by suggestion or camouflage but by un- 
covering and facing the causes behind the 
effects — ^in a word, the Truth. 

As conscious secrecy is the protector and 
agent of all evil in conduct, so z^wconscious 
secrecy operates to conceal the ultimate evil 
causation of many disease conditions. The 
negative aspect of Nature, in conduct and in 
disease, can only manifest when its sources are 
hidden. What is true for individuals is true 
for pairs, for groups, for races. Consciously 
we shim the contemplation of our weaknesses 
and the memories of bitter or htimiliating ex- 

^ Wm. Fielding in Sanity and Sex, page i88. 
179 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

periences. But ^^consciously we brood over 
deep emotional feelings, whether of desire or 
repulsion, and try to hide them from our con- 
scious life. It is this unconscious brooding, or 
inner conflict, which if prolonged shows forth 
disguised as many disease symptoms and 
various neuroses. Wide professional experi- 
ence shows that when the unconscious and 
hidden causes are uncovered and dragged out 
before the consciousness, the abnormal ex- 
pressions usually cease. 

This negative principle of unconscious con- 
cealment finds expression in the unhappiness 
of many marriages. The causation is often 
centered in unpleasant memories which have 
been transferred from the conscious to the 
unconscious, and there preserved and elabo- 
rated into complexes. The unconscious activ- 
ity would tend to show outwardly as reluctance 
to discuss or read anything that might recall 
the hidden memories or suggest them. In- 
tellectual and cultured people who had certain 
little sins of personal carelessness to their 
accounts would unconsciously take the atti- 

i8o 



PSYCHOANALYSIS 

tude that they and their Hke do not have to be 
told of crude and obvious causes of marital 
discord, such as relate to deportment or per- 
sonal hygiene. 

When there are such hidden complexes 
tmderlying married unhappiness, and they are 
deliberately sought for and brought to the 
surface of consciousness, the results are usually 
comparable with the results obtained in the 
treatment of disease or neuroses which depend 
on analogous mental and emotional complexes. 
The complexes and their power for evil are 
broken up as soon as the searchlight of con- 
scious attention is directed on them, and the 
personalities are liberated. 

The conscious intellectual level of a person 
is one thing, and the z^;zconscious desire level 
quite another. Certain information that may 
seem CTude or even stupidly obvious to the 
cultivated intellect, may be just that which has 
been carelessly thrown into the tmconscious, 
and then consciously forgotten, and is now the 
cause of trouble. The tmconscious never 
forgets anything which has an emotional con- 

i8i 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

tent, and if possible works it up into a complex 
that later may manifest symbolically and 
destructively in the conscious life. 

The first requisite of those who would know 
and remove such possible causes of their 
married imhappiness is moral courage: the 
courage that to many would be greater than 
to serve in first-line trenches; the courage to 
face in their ugliness our own imperfections; 
and then the even greater courage to correct 
them, instead of pushing them back again 
into our imconscious, which then rationalizes 
excuses and defenses at the expense of others. 

Hence the constructive and limitless value 
of Truth, in its aspect as Frankness, in mar- 
riage as everywhere else. 



182 



CHAPTER XIV 

INDIVIDUALISM AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 

One of the causes of the greater stress in mar- 
ried Hf e now than in the times of our ancestors 
is the far greater development of individuahsm 
now than then. In these days people read 
more, study more, think more, know more, and 
live more than formerly. Women have 
emerged from serfdom into equal legal rights 
and privileges with men, and with the larger 
freedom and experience which that equality 
gives them. All that has resulted in a tre- 
mendous impetus to the development of 
individualism in both sexes but notably in 
women. 

Our female ancestors were reared and edu- 
cated imder conventional restraints. They 
were secluded from much of the mental and 
emotional life of the living world. Their read- 

183 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

ing was supervised and censored by their hus- 
bands. Under that system most of them grew 
up submissive and dutiful, recognizing wo- 
man's lot as the inferior one, and obeying 
their husbands even if they could not strictly 
comply with the other two pledges of the 
marriage yoke. 

But that system and that time have passed 
away forever. The social world now has the 
great fact of individualism before it, within it, 
a part of itself, with all that means in the way 
of radical changes in customs and habits, in 
revised standards of conduct, of domestic 
relations, of sex problems. 

The only reasonable attitude is to admit and 
recognize and welcome the new individualism 
and its ever growing demand for greater free- 
dom of expression. The problem is not how 
to check individualism but how to guide it 
along constructive lines. The sanest method 
would seem to be to seek for a simple standard 
of conduct, based on obvious common interest 
and common sense, which could make a con- 
vincing appeal to ordinary justice and ex- 

184 



INDIVIDUALISM 

pediency. Most reasoning people have come 
to know that whatever is best for the common 
good is best for the individual good. Further- 
more, the truest Hberty and the freest scope 
for individualism are invariably found in a 
system which stresses the common good. It 
comes back in the end to the simplest and pro- 
foundest teaching ever given to men: Do as 
you would be done by. All the ethical teach- 
ings of philosophy, theology and jurispru- 
dence and all rules of conduct are summed up 
in those seven words. 

Now as to individualism and social conven- 
tions. The most serious aspect of individual- 
ism, it goes without saying, is in relation to the 
{ freer association of the sexes. Every personal- 
ity has its responsibility to every other per- 
sonality, and the more developed a personality 
becomes, the more is its responsibility. All 
educated persons who are conscious of a 
growth of individualism in themselves which 
seems to demand freer sex expression should 
remember that many more persons who are 
ignorant and undeveloped morally will fancy 

185 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

themselves also "individuals," and will slav- 
ishly imitate their superiors in intellect and 
social position. Intellectual and cidtured men 
and women almost always havB at least some 
development of will power and conscience, dis- 
cretion and sentiment, and those virtues are 
not likely to be entirely forgotten at such times 
as they may yield to unconventional sex at- 
traction. On the other hand, ignorant and 
uncultured people have as a rule little con- 
science, no discretion, no will power, and of 
course no sentiment. That which means 
unconventional love to the individualist, 
means nothing but rank license to the man in 
the street. 

Before the development of individualism in 
the higher classes became so obvious to every- 
one, the common herd had its lapses, of course, 
but in the main its sex passions were held in 
restraint by conventions, by religious authority, 
and — above all — ^by habit. Now ''Habit is 
the great fly-wheel of Society, its most pre- 
cious conservative agent," says William 
James. But notwithstanding the power of 

i86 



INDIVIDUALISM 

habit, we have to reckon with imitation, which 
is one of the strongest forces in sentient na- 
ture. When the herd sees its social superiors 
doing attractive things which are also possible 
to it at its corresponding level, it begins to 
imitate them. The habit of ages which had 
restrained its passional nature within safety 
limits is threatened and begins to relax. Once 
out from under authority, whether legal or 
conventional or religious, there is no limit to 
the license of the ignorant and tmcultured man 
except in capacity and opporttmity. For the 
demonstration of this tendency on a large scale 
it is only necessary to cite the atrocities 
committed during the Great War and after- 
wards in Russia. 

All cultured people who think they feel the 
call of sex individualism in their blood should 
realize that whenever they shock the conven- 
tional sentiment of a commimity they are 
setting examples which will surely be imitated 
by many undeveloped and irresponsible per- 
sons. *' Unsettle not the mind of the ignorant 
man," says one of the sacred books of the 

187 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

Orient. To unsettle the ignorant mind to the 
extent of substituting sex license for sex con- 
trol, is to sow the seeds of national and racial 
disaster. 

From this point of view, then, not to speak 
for the moment of others, sex license or free 
love among people of the higher or educated 
classes is wrong. It gives example and excuse 
to the lower and undeveloped classes to depart 
from an ancient custom which has been and 
still is their greatest safeguard at their social 
level. 

As to individualism in marriage. Individ- 
ualism means of course expansion of con- 
sciousness and multiplicity of modes of 
self-expression; and all that means variety 
of fields of interest. The practical bearing 
in marriage is just this: 

(i) When a developed or many-sided per- 
sonality is united with another developed 
personality, and two or more of their interests 
are the same, there is a basis for reciprocal 
and enjoyable communion in those common 
interests; provided both recognize that the 

1 88 



INDIVIDUALISM 

other interests which each has that are not 
held in common may, if desired, be shared 
with other persons, within the boimdaries of 
common sense. 

(2) When a developed and versatile person- 
ality is linked with a single-track, or one- 
cylinder, personality, interest in the one com- 
mon field of interest or meditmi of exchange is 
soon exhausted for the developed personality 
and is succeeded by disappointment, a sense 
of lack in the partner, and desire to find other 
companionship. The developed personality 
becomes polarized, and the exhaustion of 
interest in the one common field remains and 
may become permanent, tmless the psychic 
energy is transferred to another field of inter- 
est, shared perhaps with another companion, 
and long enough to enable him or her to be- 
come depolarized. 

Reactionary minds, who fear and therefore 
condemn individuaHsm, point to the tm- 
doubted fact that our ancestors had less mari- 
tal trouble than we have. They accotmt for 
it by saying that our modem yotmg people 

189 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

think and read and know too much, especially 
our women. I have in mind a brilliant but 
intolerant man who has a talented wife and 
two talented children. He is always in conflict 
with his family, and actually resents that they 
are not non-entities. He says: ''The trouble 
with my family is that they are all individuals. ' ' 

We admit that our ancestors seem to have 
had rather more domestic harmony than we 
have. And it may very well be that their rela- 
tive immunity had something to do with their 
more limited field of thought and emotion, 
especially, be it repeated, of their women. 
Having far less mental and emotional experi- 
ence than their descendants, naturally they 
had far less imagination. And ''being defi- 
cient in imagination, love lacks the strong 
psychic or emotional appeal that it has in the 
more highly organized mentality." (William 
Fielding, in Sanity in Sex, page 196.) 

A moment's thought will show that to be 
deficient in imagination is to be deficient in 
vision and in initiative ; in brief, to be inferior. 
Therefore it follows that the unconscious ideal 

190 



INDIVIDUALISM 

of the antis, stand-patters and reactionaries 
who clamor for censorship, long skirts, and fig 
leaves, is, in a word, inferiority! Moreover, 
those who argue for what analysis shows to be 
inferiority unconsciously proclaim their own 
measure. 

This is the day, or rather the dawn, of in- 
dividualism, and social conditions and conven- 
tions will have to adapt themselves to the new 
order. And this brings us to the bitter ques- 
tion of divorce. That question has already 
been dealt with so ably and nobly by many 
clear thinkers in recent years that the problem 
itself may be said to have been solved; solved, 
that is, in the same sense that many of the 
great public health problems have been solved ; 
in the sense that the problematical features are 
now thoroughly tmderstood, and that all that 
^ remains to be done is to break up the inertia, — 
political, conventional, and religious, — which 
yet stands in the way. 

The intelligent attitude toward divorce is 
that which recognizes that where a normal 
man and wife have fotmd that their interests 

191 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

and points of view are widely different, and 
they do not have two or more mutual interests 
in which they can heartily cooperate, those 
two are probably incompatible, essentially 
and fundamentally, and should separate and 
seek other mates : provided that the interests of 
their children will not suffer by the separation. 
However, some of the dreariest couples I know 
have held together from mistaken or superfi- 
cial ideas on this head. It is open to question 
if children would not be more benefited by 
the happier and more spontaneous atmosphere 
after a readjustment in the parentsMives. 

Those who have gone most thoroughly into the 
question of social maladjustments and the remedies 
are pronounced in their advocacy of less restriction on 
divorce. . . . The happiness and well-being of the 
greatest number of people are of more concern to them 
than the maintenance of certain ancient tradition and 
age-worn customs. (William Fielding, in Sanity m 
SeXy pages 203-204.) 

In the consideration of divorce the only 
question of right or wrong is the question of 
expediency. True expediency is always right, 
for in the nature of things the two are identical ; 

192 



INDIVIDUALISM 

no wrong could be expedient in the larger 
sense. Looked at in this way, ''Virtue no 
longer consists in literal obedience to arbitrary 
standards set by community or church, but in 
conduct consistent with the highest good of 
the individual and society."' 

The fear is often uttered by Roman Catholic 
clergy and others that if divorce were easy 
the sanctity of the home would be destroyed 
and licentiousness would become general. 
That is Tiot the argument of reason but of 
rationalization (I use the word in the psycho- 
analytic sense) in the endeavor to justify and 
bolster up an obsolete and now spiritually 
destructive convention. Actually the reverse 
should be more nearly true, namely, that if 
divorce were easier there would be fewer 
divorces. One of the irritating factors in a 
discordant marriage complex is the feeling of 
being boimd without chance of escape. The 
irk of that feeling alone stimulates contrari- 
ness where there is already discord, and may 
imconsciously magnify mounds intomountains. 

* J. p. Lichtenberger, in Divorce^ a Study oj Social Causation, 
13 193 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

However, as to the effect of easy divorce on 
public morality and family integrity, we may 
confidently rest assured that ''Marriage, in a 
word, has such sure allies in Man's psycho- 
physical conditions of life that we need not be 
afraid of freedom of divorce becoming equiva- 
lent to polygamy. What this freedom will 
abolish is only lifelong slavery."^ 

But after all is said, it is useless to argue 
about that which will inevitably come to pass. 
One does not need to be a seer to know that 
some things are decreed. Among those things 
are easy divorce, marriage of priests, and eco- 
nomic readjustment. And yet one other thing 
is just as certain: that the Institutions which 
oppose with their united strength those re- 
forms will have two choices; to adapt them- 
selves to them, or — fall. 

By an interesting coincidence, as the last 
paragraph was being written, came the news 
that the Church of Poland had decided to 
allow its priests to marry. The Church of the 
Czecho-Slovak Republic made the same de- 

^ Ellen Key. 

194 



INDIVIDUALISM 

cision more than a year before. The Orthodox 
Greek Church has always insisted on marriage 
of the priesthood. 

Coincident with the greater sexual freedom 
of women there has developed a corresponding 
tolerance of it by Society. Seldom now do 
we hear the old and self-righteous expression 
''lost'' or ''fallen*' or "ruined" women, ex- 
cept in small towns. Insensibly Society has 
come aroimd more to the square deal point of 
view towards women. The psychology of this 
change is interesting. The former attitude of 
scorn and ostracism towards single women, 
especially by women, who yielded to sexual 
attraction, was a form of unconscious sex 
defense. In those days mere physical virtue 
was a woman's prime asset. No man then, 
whatever his own sexual record, would think 
of taking to his "bed and board" any but a 
"pure" woman; none other was fit to become 
the custodian of his "honor," whatever that 
may have meant. 

Now, however, we have Woman's Suffrage 
and all that that means in the way of sex 

195 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

equality and opportunity. Symbolically one 
of the most interesting outer signs of this great 
change is the change in women's clothing. 
The legs are the organs of locomotion, of free- 
dom of action, of liberty. Any kind of clothing 
that limits the movements of the legs impedes 
freedom of action. Long skirts, hoop skirts, 
trains, and side saddles did that. Their use 
continued while women were in subjection, 
but they were discarded as Woman's freedom 
grew and grew. Short skirts, then, are sym- 
bols, not of immodesty, frivolity, or sex li- 
cense, but of the freedom and equality of 
Woman. 

It is significant that such objection as there 
is to short skirts comes only from those who 
for any reason stand for reaction and repres- 
sion. In June, 1921, there appeared an As- 
sociated Press interview with a famous Paris- 
ian designer of women's clothing, in which he 
said that next year's fashions would probably 
see a considerable lengthening of skirts, due to 
demands of the Church. He said that while 
France was not nominally a Catholic country, 

196 



INDIVIDUALISM 

still designers felt that they could not alto- 
gether ignore the wishes of the Church, and 
hence, for 1922, longer skirts and higher necks. 
Taken at its face value, that interview con- 
notes a slavish degree of mental subjection for 
a Frenchman. Taken psychologically it has 
quite another interpretation. Consciously or 
imconsciously it was put out as a feeler to test 
the reaction of women generally; to find out 
before the suggested 1922 fashion became 
enacted into fashionable Law, whether modem 
Woman could be bluffed into surrendering her 
hard-earned right to dress as free Woman 
should; or whether she had once and for all 
time passed beyond the coersion of repressive 
Institutions. 



197 



CHAPTER XV 

ECONOMIC STRESS 

The public seems almost wholly unaware of 
a new type of young woman that has quietly 
grown up. This type has precisely the same 
sex standard as the average man. These girls, 
attractive and intelligent, earning fair salaries, 
living with parents or relatives, have one or 
more men friends with whom they in turn go 
out to dinner, then to a theater or dance hall, 
and afterward to a hotel. They do as they do, 
they frankly admit, not for pay but because 
they like it. They would scorn to accept money, 
though as a rule not averse to presents, as furs 
or jewelry. They will consider no offers of 
marriage except from wealthy men. They 
know that marriage and children with poor 
men mean economic slavery. From their 
experience with men they believe that he will 

198 



ECONOMIC STRESS 

be imfaithful anyway, while she is stuck with 
babies and poverty. So why marry? they say, 
when most of the joys and none of the hmita- 
tions of marriage can be had without marry- 
ing? Furthermore, these girls have sex educa- 
tion. They know all about birth control and 
conceptual preventatives, in spite of taboo and 
censorship. 

The psychology of this type of woman is a 
natural development from modern economic 
conditions. While it is true that most women 
( have desire for motherhood, it is just as true 
that intelligent modem women know and 
cannot forget that motherhood now means 
martyrdom unless they have plenty of money. 
Consequently, large and increasing mmibers of 
young women, so well fitted for motherhood, 
decide not to marry. Having made that de- 
cision, the urge to hold on to their sexual virtue 
becomes progressively weaker. This tendency 
is of course more or less unconscious, and 
comes from the elemental fact that sexual 
virtue in immarried women has for its primal 
purpose the attraction of the mate and the 

199 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

father of the children. When husband and 
children are no longer desired, sexual virtue 
has no further practical significance or utility, 
and, unless conventional or religious restraint 
is strong, the maintenance of virtue comes to 
be viewed as a form of sterile asceticism. 

When this attitude is reached a lover ap- 
pears, a young man with views similar to hers. 
Both regard children as the only excuse for 
marriage. Both know that their combined 
incomes are not more than enough to support 
themselves comfortably or even decently, and 
that as soon as she becomes enceinte she would 
have to stop working and their income be 
reduced about half. They lack the courage—- 
or the hardihood? — to enter marriage under 
such dismal conditions, and decide to enjoy 
youth and love with no obligations beyond 
mutual satisfaction. 

And from their points of view why should 
they not do so? They have no constructive 
philosophy of life to indicate any other course. 
Religion promises post-mortem rewards for 
virtue and large families, but nothing here 

200 



ECONOMIC STRESS 

and now. Government truly says that na- 
tional security rests on the integrity of the 
family life ; but instead of offering inducements 
it adds burdens by taxing small incomes and 
by allowing only inadequate exemptions. 

Nearly everyone knows the sex standard of 
the average man. Heretofore it has been the 
relative chastity of the woman, the potential 
mother, which has been the anchor of the social 
order. When, therefore, single yotmg women, 
in larger and larger numbers, begin to abandon 
the age-old position of Woman and adopt the 
promiscuous sex standard of average Man: 
what else does it bode than a tendency which, 
if not checked by some constructive alterna- 
tive, may eventually wreck the Institution of 
Marriage? 

This type of woman has arrived. She is here. 
There is no use in blinking at it. The burning 
question is: What are we going to do about it? 

As said before, education convinces every 
intelHgent person that marriage without 
money spells martyrdom. It is easy enough 
for middle-aged reformers, in their salaried 

201 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

positions and comfortable homes, to talk about 
sexual purity and duty to the Race. All true. 
But it is nonsensical to expect altruism and 
heroism and willingness for martyrdom in 
young blood. Education has outsped eco- 
nomic readjustment. But education — ^wheth- 
er political, spiritual, or sexual — cannot be 
stopped, either by Governmental censorship or 
the mimic thunder of the Church. The con- 
structive alternative lies in economic readjust- 
ment and nowhere else. While Governments 
remain inert before present appalling economic 
conditions they trim their courses directly 
towards free love and race suicide. 

Readers of Harper's Magazine will remember 
the illuminating articles — now in book form as 
Hail Columbia — ^by the British writer, W. L. 
George, on the American Woman, in which he 
discusses the difficulties amounting to eco- 
nomic slavery of American married women, 
particularly when they have children. In 
theory the American woman is put on a pedes- 
tal, worshiped and waited on, but in fact she 
has the hardest lot of all cultured women. 

202 



ECONOMIC STRESS 

Domestic service is almost unobtainable in 
America even with incomes of $10,000 a year, 
and such as can be had at exorbitant wages is 
as a rule insolent, inefficient, and dishonest. 
And that of course means that the American 
wife and mother and home-maker must dis- 
card reading, study, diversion, and the vital 
problems in the education of her children, and 
deteriorate to the level of a household drudge. 

Women I have talked with say that they 
find the strain of being both wife and mother 
almost intolerable imder present economic 
conditions. How can a modem mother, they 
say, of moderate means, taking care of house- 
work and babies, keep herself neat and clean 
and rested and an object of romantic interest 
to the average selfish and thoughtless man? 

Most men have no conception of the teditmi 
and drudgery of wives and mothers who can- 
not afford sufficient domestic service. Such 
husbands return home tired after a day's work 
in business. They are annoyed when, instead 
of finding well-kept, comfortable apartments 
and well-groomed attractive wives, they come 

203 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

into disorder, crying babies, and wives fa- 
tigued and preoccupied and unattractively 
dressed. The men in their annoyance forget 
that they are in part responsible for their 
present conditions. They want relaxation and 
diversion, and, poor fellows! they need them. 
They spend less and less time at home and 
always more at clubs, amusements, or with 
other women. Imagine the feelings of wives 
and mothers, thus circtmistanced, who see 
their husbands drifting away from them, and 
no prospect of change for the better ! 

History teaches that all strong peoples have 
come up through long periods of nearness to 
Nature, living by hard work from the yields 
of land, flocks, and herds. Monogamy, many 
children, and frugality were the rule. Later 
on as certain men became wealthy and idle, 
they substituted riotous living for sane and 
productive activity. Idleness, luxury, and 
sex-license always go together. The poorer 
imitate the vices of the wealthy, as far as they 
can. And then commences the period of 
deterioration in which the stem virtues begin 

204 



ECONOMIC STRESS 

to be neglected and held in contempt. Manli- 
ness gives place to effeminacy, womanliness to 
flippancy, patriotism to cynicism. And by 
that time, as Roosevelt said, "the pltmderer is 
at hand." The causes of such deterioration 
are ultimately economic, being the dispropor- 
tion and the bad use of wealth. 

In modem times there are the same ten- 
dencies as of old but immensely more compli- 
cated by the introduction of machinery. The 
holders of land became the owners of producing 
machinery, and they as a class now rule with a 
degree of despotism undreamed of before. The 
result is the economic slavery of all who do not 
hold land and machinery. Adam Smith be- 
lieved that the competition of selfish interests 
would automatically maintain an equitable 
adjustment of economic conditions, and under 
that idea arose the slogan : '* Competition is the 
life of trade." And that rule worked then, or 
seemed to, because life was not so complicated. 
Events moved more slowly, there was more 
room to spread out over, and no machinery to 
speak of. A later writer, comparing Adam 

205 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

Smith's time with the present, sees that the 
changes are so marked and the conditions so 
different that social evolution can no longer 
proceed normally under a system of '* balanced 
selfishness/' Hence Competition is no longer 
the life but the limitation of trade. 

The Capitalistic System does not seem to 
have learned any lesson from the World War 
nor from developments in Russia. Labor, 
still ignorant and unprogressive but learning 
rapidly, has realized its power, has tasted 
the fruits of that power, and will never again 
submit for long to the old system which grew 
on its exploitation. But the Capitalistic 
System seems to be again attempting to con- 
tinue the old methods: lowering wages to the 
pre-war scale without corresponding decrease 
in cost of living; oppressing its high-grade 
employees by demanding over-time without 
pay; the same old curse of the middle-men, 
etc. 

It is the extreme of folly, however, to blame 
individual members of the System, and to 
expect wrongs to be righted by violence or the 

206 



ECONOMIC STRESS 

removal of certain rich men. They are as 
much slaves of the System as are its helpless 
employees, and this is seen when sometimes a 
rich man attempts reforms in his own estab- 
lishment. He incurs the wrath of the united 
System, feels its heavy and ruthless hand, and, 
often, the ingratitude of the people he tried to 
help. Henry Ford appears to be the first suc- 
cessful exception. May continued success be 
with him — ^to the extent to which he honestly 
works for good ! 

The System is a tremendous Entity, moving 
backwards by its own blind momenttim, a 
commercial Lucifer which defies the forward 
movement of Evolution. It cannot reform 
because it has no united will to reform, and no 
vision beyond self-interest. The only possi- 
bilities of change would appear to be along the 
following lines: 

1 . The gradual pressure and encroachment 
of Labor on Capital until the System knows 
that it must either compromise or fall. 

2. The development of practical coopera- 
tive or commtmistic systems on a large scale. 

207 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

3. The pulverization of the System when 
the accumulated forces of Evolution over- 
whelm it. The last would probably mean a 
social cataclysm like that of Russia. 

Further discussion of the economic problem 
would be out of place in this book. What I 
have said is in a measure describing the 
obvious, but many of us need to be occasion- 
ally reminded of it. The obK^^ious is so familiar 
that we are apt to overlook it ; and so tiresome 
that we imconsciously take the ostrich atti- 
tude toward it. Enough has been said to 
emphasize that in the final taking of stock 
the marriage problem is inseparable from the 
economic problem. No amount of knowledge 
of the special problems of love and sex can 
avail in themselves without a sound economic 
foundation ; nor can untold wealth alone bring 
married happiness unless there is understand- 
ing of the natural laws of personal relationships. 

In stmi, economic stress is directly respons- 
ible for the ruin of many marriages, the pre- 
vention of many more, the prevention of 
children in the better classes, and the spread of 

208 



ECONOMIC STRESS 

free love. Economic stress has its roots in the 
fundamental errors in the present World 
System. How those errors may be corrected 
we can only surmise. Let us hope that the 
signs of our time do not mean that it is now 
with us as it was with ''Mighty Rome; cor- 
rupt, unchaste, and tottering to its fall!" 

As Civilization endured and emerged from 
the night of the Middle Ages, and still stands 
after the World War, we can only trust that 
as the issue is greater than personalities or 
Systems, Society will somehow resolve the 
present impasse without having first to endure 
the purifying fire of a great devastation. 



14 209 



CHAPTER XVI 

MONOGAMY AND PROGRESS 

In studying the psychology of sex individual- 
ism it is instructive to contrast the sex stand- 
ards and the material strengths of the repre- 
sentative nations of today. The Americans, 
British, and Northern peoples generally, try 
to live up to a rather stern standard of married 
virtue, in which the wife and mother is the one 
object of sex interest. They have a monoga- 
mous system outwardly, though with much 
clandestine polygamy, but they raise the 
standard of monogamy and are ashamed of 
their polygamy; all of which signifies some 
considerable attempt at self-control in sex. 

The Latins also have an outwardly monoga- 
mous system, but are much more polygamous. 
They desire children, but generally regard the 
wife only as the mother and as the social rep- 

2IO 



MONOGAMY AND PROGRESS 

resent ative of the man. ''Romance and 
marriage do not go together/' frankly say the 
men. ''A woman married six months and 
without a lover is a fool/' said a titled Italian 
lady. In stmi, many Latins do not regard self- 
control in sex as a virtue to be cultivated. 
And from their platform they are consistent. 
Regarding the wife as soon ceasing to be an 
object of romantic interest, a life of married 
virtue would then mean a life without romance 
or passion — a thwarted life, in fact. Hence the 
Latins are apt to consider self-control in sex 
as meaningless asceticism. 

The only European nation which still 
authorizes polygamy is Turkey. Turkey is 
the successor of the great Moslem Empire, 
which had its wonderful rise, its decline, and 
its fall, as with all great Empires and States 
of the past. The fall actually occurred some 
one hundred years ago, though a fictitious 
semblance of nationality is kept up even after 
the World War, but only because the other 
nations of Europe could not and cannot decide 
on an amicable division of what remains of 

211 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

Tiirkish territory. The only fact of interest in 
this reference to Turkey is that the one mod- 
em polygamous nation of Europe has neither 
stamina nor capacity for improvement. It 
could not compete with or even exist contem- 
poraneously with progressive nations but for 
their sufferance and indecision. 

The Northern nations dominate the modem 
world. France holds a middle ground but 
emotionally is nearer to the Latins. The 
peoples of the North have— or strive for — self- 
control in sex. The Latins do not. Self- 
control in sex means self-control in every 
other way. Self-control is one of the elements 
of efficiency. How much of the Northern 
dominance and superior energy and efficiency 
may ultimately depend on their greater effort 
at self-control in sex? 

The adoption of monogamy by all modem 
progressive nations is one of the most signifi- 
cant developments in social evolution. Mon- 
ogamy is not natural but artificial. It has 
come to be a system in much the same way 
that Common Law has developed — from long 

212 



MONOGAMY AND PROGRESS 

experience and from expediency. Man's na- 
tural tendency is towards polygamy; it is 
ostrich-like to ignore so patent a fact. Wo- 
man's natural tendency is not towards poly- 
gamy or polyandry, under normal or livable 
conditions. The present greater sexual free- 
dom of women is not to be interpreted as 
preferential sex license, but as a sequential 
development from modem economic stress and 
slavery. It is to the Race what hysteria and 
neuroses are to individuals; an abnormal ex- 
pression of a normal urge, the great Creative 
urge, which is thwarted from right expression 
through the normal channels of marriage and 
parenthood by the prevailing and criminal 
economic conditions, which, if not corrected, 
threaten Civilization itself. 

The remarkable fact that monogamy has 
been chosen, against masculine tendency, by 
I the most advanced peoples after ages of ex- 
perience, is the surest indication that it is the 
best System for right social evolution. It is 
noteworthy that monogamy coincides with 
emancipation of woman. The more advanced 

213 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

a people, the better they treat their women. 
As the natural tendency of Woman is against 
polygamy while Man's is toward it, the infer- 
ence is plain that the gradual abandonment 
by Man of his strongest selfish urge is a sure 
sign of the growing participation of Woman 
in the councils of men, and of her place in 
Nature as Man's inspiration to his betterment. 

Hence the present tendency of single women 
towards free love cannot be regarded as other- 
wise than social retrogression of ominous im- 
port. The blame is not theirs but that of a 
soulless economic system which has its parallel 
in Nero fiddling while Rome burned. 

The question of polygamy, however, is now 
squarely before some of the nations whose 
men were depleted by the slaughter of the 
World War. In England alone there are said 
to be some 2,000,000 women in excess of men. 
Has Society a right to deny to those women the 
experiences of love and parenthood when it 
has not enough men to go around? The ques- 
tion involves not only fair dealing but expedi- 
ency. Conventions, after all, are mere working 

214 



MONOGAMY AND PROGRESS 

rules of conduct for normal times. In the 
presence of emergencies they always have to 
be made to fit developments. So in the present 
sad emergency with its plurality of marriage- 
able women and paucity of men. ^'Nature is 
stronger than nurture" in the presence of great 
calamities. Unless some sane and human 
arrangement is legally enacted for those true 
war widows, Nature will take its own cotu*se 
with many of them, and they will seek their 
compensation either in free love or in prostitu- 
tion. 

Aside from the '' moral'' aspect of the ques- 
tion in this emergency is its effect on national 
birth rates. The nations involved have two 
courses before them to choose from. The first 
is Convention and practical sterility from mil- 
lions of potential mothers whose yield of chil- 
dren from free love and prostitution will be 
almost nil on accoimt of neglect, abortion, 
venereal disease, wide knowledge of conceptual 
preventatives; and such children as stu^vive 
will be not the fittest but the unfit. The 
second course will be temporary legalized 

215 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

polygamy, and, for Britain, say 4,000,000 
average children added to the national birth 
register. 

While the evidence seems to prove that the 
monogamous system is the best, it has some 
aspects that are not good. Actually the sys- 
tem is not so much a fact as a sham; a fact for 
a few, a sham for the many. Under its outer 
show of righteousness and high morality is a 
mass of deceit and hypocrisy, of real polygamy, 
free love and prostitution, and degradation of 
women. Looked at in that way it is a ' ' whited 
sepulcher." Perhaps the real lesson of mono- 
gamy is the psychological one, the exhorta- 
tion to self-control. As already said, self- 
control in sex, not amoimting to abnormal 
repression, means self-control in most other 
lines of conduct, and therefore character- 
building and all-around efficiency. Self- 
control is the basis of unselfishness, and 
tmselfishness is the inspiration and the mo- 
tive power of all improvement and all true 
progress in social evolution. 

The ideal of monogamy is therefore an ex- 

216 



MONOGAMY AND PROGRESS 

cellent one to hold on to and to live up to as 
far as possible. There is something beautiful 
in the ideal of fiancee, wife, and mother of one's 
children, all united in one radiant woman; and 
whatever is beautiful is necessarily ennobling. 
This ideal is fondly believed in by nearly all 
developed men and women before they marry. 
The trouble about ideals generally, and that 
one in particular, is that in their fineness and 
beauty they shrink away out of sight before 
the mommiental ugliness and crassness of 
modem ''civilized'' life in cities. The Latins 
frankly say and believe that the ideal of one 
woman cannot last. The Northerns maintain 
that it does, — or should, rather; and probably 
they are nearest the truth. We know that 
the married ideal is realized in some instances. 
And those few, shining out like the larger 
stars in a murky sky, are an earnest of what 
can be true for others in the better time that 
we must affirm is surely ahead, when economic 
conditions shall be adapted to the needs of the 
many, rather than as now for the luxtiry of a 
few. 

217 



CHAPTER XVII 

ROOSEVELT ON MARRIAGE 

The late President Theodore Roosevelt always 
stood for a very high standard of family life, 
and some of his opinions on love and marriage 
were stimulating and helpful. In a speech of 
which the keynote was patriotism he said that 
a man could not be patriotic or a good citizen 
if he loved another country as well as he loved 
his own country. He applied the same argu- 
ment to marriage, saying that a man who loved 
another woman as well as he loved his wife 
could not be a good husband and father. Any 
of the opinions of that great man and (to me) , 
greatest American, merit profound respect and 
deep consideration. His opinions and senti- 
ments just cited may very well be accepted by 
most people as ennobling standards to try and 
live up to. But there is a minority for whom 

218 



ROOSEVELT ON MARRIAGE 

they require some modification, though re- 
maining essentially true for them also. 

First as to patriotism. There was a time 
when ''My country, right or wrong" was 
thought to represent the highest form of 
patriotism. That was merely a wider applica- 
tion of the older European standard: ''The 
King can do no wrong.'' Both were the rule 
before the awakening of what has been called 
community conscience. This commimity con- 
science has necessarily repudiated such primi- 
tive and outgrown ideas of patriotism. Kings 
can do wrong and countries — groups of people 
— can do wrong. An individual who has done 
wrong, and whose conscience is strong enough 
to dominate false pride (vanity) will not per- 
sist in his wrong course after he realizes that 
it is wrong, but will stop and try to right the 
wrong. When an enlightened nation has hap- 
pened to do wrong and its people know it, it 
will endeavor to make amends. Only back- 
ward peoples of backward governments will 
shout: "My country, right or wrong" and 
blindly and stupidly support their statesmen 

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MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

in continuing what is obviously a wrong inter- 
national policy. 

When, therefore, a people has reached that 
stage of political evolution and self-examina- 
tion wherein it can recognize and admit that 
it may do wrong, then comes the realization 
that they are not necessarily better than some 
other peoples or nations. Having been cap- 
able of wrong-doing, they^re not essentially 
superior to others who have also sometimes 
done wrongly. The next step is the recogni- 
tion of national, and later racial, equality. 

When we recognize national equality as a 
principle, we then must admit that our greater 
love for the coimtry of our birth or nationality 
is not foimded on our country's superiority 
but on sentimental considerations. Apart 
from those considerations there is no reason 
why a person should not love two or more 
cotmtries equally well. This wider interna- 
tional love may be better understood, or felt, 
by putting oneself in the position of a person 
of mixed stock, in whose childhood both 
languages were spoken, where the aspirations 

220 



ROOSEVELT ON MARRIAGE 

of both cotmtries were intelligently talked 
about, and where the residence frequently al- 
ternated from one country to the other. Such 
persons would be very likely to grow up loving 
both countries about equally, though their 
citizenship would depend on what nationality 
the father decided to retain. 

What about patriotism in such cases? And 
also in those others who have attained that 
wider view through study? Just this: Pa- 
triotism is more than love of country ; it is also 
duty to one's country, and in the word '' duty" 
is the guide. One may love more than one 
coimtry, but one's duty is towards that coim- 
try of which one is a citizen or subject. Duty 
is only another word for service; service in 
peace and in war. 

Perhaps the highest possible love of country 
is a love which is not blind to its faults, and 
which strives to its utmost to correct those 
faults by word and example. The question of 
duty in war service need not be very difficult 
to decide, even in an instance where one's 
country had engaged in a war which in the 

221 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

person's best judgment was wrong and un- 
justified. Modern war service now includes 
so much that is reconstructive and humane, 
as hospital and ambulance service, that one 
entirely out of sympathy with the war could 
yet do his patriotic duty without invoking the 
unattractive and dubious role of the conscien- 
tious objector. 

Secondly, as to marriage. Can a man or a 
woman be a good husband or wife, and parent, 
if he or she loves another man or woman as 
well as, or better than, the marriage partner? 

The emotion of love is a definite reaction 
resulting from definite conditions. It can be 
inspired in the presence of those conditions; 
quickly where they are fully developed, as in 
love at first sight; slowly where they are less 
developed, as by propinquity. Its duration — 
or rather the duration of the expression — 
depends on the maintenance of the conditions 
required for love expression. Its strength, as 
just said, depends on the degree of complete- 
ness in which those conditions are present. 
Love, being a natural reaction or force, is as 

222 



ROOSEVELT ON MARRIAGE 

entirely unmoral as electricity. Given the 
appropriate chemical or physical factors, elec- 
tricity results. Given the appropriate physical 
and psychological factors, love results. 

If this hypothesis is correct, then the ele- 
ment of blame cannot exist where a married 
person meets and loves another man or woman. 
And this confronts us again with the question 
whether one can be a good marriage partner 
if loving another as well or better. Let us 
turn back to the analogous question in rela- 
tion to patriotism and citizenship. It is 
possible for some people to love two coimtries 
equally well either when they are of mixed 
stock, or in the perhaps rarer cases of deep 
students and altruists. But in matters of duty 
or service, common honesty dictates that one's 
obligation is toward the cotmtry of which one 
is a citizen or subject. 

So, it seems to me, in marriage. A man or 
woman may involuntarily love another woman 
or man as well as or better than the wife or 
husband. But the obligation, the duty, is 
towards the one in legal bonds, — tmless there 

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MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

are questions of cruelty or disease, but in such 
cases the laws of most Northern countries now 
provide relief by sepaiation or divorce. Love 
is an infinite and irresistible force, as wide as 
the Universe, the one eternal principle in 
Nature. Therefore a husband or a wife may 
love another woman or man, and still love the 
married partner as much as before. I say 
again that wrong-doing only comes in when 
the expression of that extra-marital love dis- 
regards suffering it may cause to a husband or 
wife; and here is where the power of the will 
must be brought to bear. A good test to apply 
when in the presence of such a situation is to 
put to oneself, sincerely and fearlessly, this 
question : Will the demonstration of my love 
for this other beloved one cause sorrow or in- 
jury to him or her, or to my wife or husband? 
If you truly and unselfishly love the other one, 
your conscience will then answer clearly and 
definitely. 

That is the acid-test of love. Selfish love 
desires primarily to receive happiness from the 
ones desired, to enjoy them. Unselfish love 

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ROOSEVELT ON MARRIAGE 

desires to give happiness to the ones loved. 
The first is not love at all but only a form of 
acquisitiveness. The second is the true and 
lasting love, and is always going outwards in 
an ever-widening circle towards the infinite. 
Selfish desire tends always to contract one's 
life circle towards the finite center, and the 
extreme type and the logical conclusion of 
indrawing selfishness is seen in misers. 

When an imselfish married person happens 
to have found as great or a greater love re- 
sponse in someone else, he or she should not 
try to kill out that new love, but instead try 
always to keep it noble and imselfish, thinking 
of the welfare of all who are loved, and not of 
his or her own happiness. If the husband or 
wife is broad enough to understand the wider 
meaning of love, there may then be a sane 
reciprocation of the additional love, and the 
very acquiescence in it may enhance or renew 
the love between husband and wife. But 
otherwise, a jealous or over-conventional dis- 
position of one of them will demand that not 
only all demonstration of love must cease, but 
IS 225 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

that the love itself must end. The unselfish 
and more liberal one would then probably 
terminate the association with the beloved 
friend, and might also conceive it a part of 
duty to try and stop loving. But that would 
be impossible, for ties of real love can never 
be broken, as they have their foundations 
deep in the heart of being. A high sense of 
duty would take care of all^family obligations, 
but the heart would turn always more towards 
the other love, and in the same measure with- 
draw itself from heart interest in the one who 
vainly and ignorantly strove to command the 
love and loyalty which it could not inspire. 

An interesting example is the love between 
Richard Wagner and Mathilde Wesendonck. 
Wagner had apparently been loyal and dutiful 
to his wife Minna until he met Mathilde, who 
had the capacity to inspire in him a greater 
love. One day his wife found a letter which 
revealed to her the situation between Wagner 
and Mathilde. And then she reacted just as 
anyone else of her personality and mentality 
would have acted. Poor, ignorant, common - 

226 



ROOSEVELT ON MARRIAGE 

place Minna went to her brilliant rival and 
made a typical scene. Wagner with the great- 
est difficulty succeeded in preventing his wife 
from starting a public scandal. But he there- 
after heroically refrained from seeing Mathilde, 
and bowed to conventional demands and 
what seemed to him his duty as a husband. 
Yet later letters to Mathilde showed that she 
held her own place as his greater love and 
source of inspiration. Minna, however, who 
demanded everything but could give nothing, 
soon lost what remained in her of interest to 
Wagner, and divorce eventually liberated him. 
If things are to be judged by their results, 
then the result of the love of Wagner and 
Mathilde more than justifies itself. The direct 
outcome, the offspring, of that great love is the 
music-drama of Tristan and Isolde, a work 
which many of the deepest students believe 
has reached the ultimate heights of music. 
Here, then, was a love, illicit if you like, which 
had the power to inspire a divine outpouring 
of poetry and music, greater than had been, 
and that fifty years later had not been even 

227 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

remotely approached in grandeur of concep- 
tion and power of expression. Perhaps there 
were other and less noble aspects of that love. 
Who knows and who cares? The one thing 
that really matters, and which remains with 
us always, is the divine music-drama of Tristan 
and Isolde, the imperishable monument to 
Love. 

In closing this chapter discussing the Roose- 
velt standard of family life, a few reflections 
present themselves. Roosevelt lived up to 
the ideals he talked about. There can hardly 
be any doubt of that, for in spite of his fame 
and power and his many political enemies, 
none of them ever tried to malign his personal 
character by alleging entanglements with 
women. A man as frank as he, whose magnetic 
and dynamic personality made noticeable 
every situation in which he took part, could 
hardly have successfully concealed any sex 
irregularities if he had been involved in any. 
Indeed, with his independence of thought and 
his scorn of shams and subterfuges, it is doubt- 
ful if he would have tried or cared particularly 

228 



ROOSEVELT ON MARRIAGE 

to hide any course of action he chose to take, 
however irregular or unconventional. A lesser 
man might have asstmied, more or less tmcon- 
sciously, such a positive attitude on family 
purity before the world as a cover for personal 
frailities and domestic inharmony. But not 
such as he. These and other considerations 
seem to warrant the conclusion that Roosevelt 
was one of those who foimd in his own home 
that heart interest and heart rest which liber- 
ate the intellect from emotional stress and set 
it free in its own field. In a letter written to 
his sister while the Election was pending he 
says: 

As I went up the White House steps Edith came to 
meet me at the door, and I suddenly reaHzed that, 
after all, no matter what the outcome of the Election 
was, my happiness was assured, — that even though 
my ambition to have the seal of approval put upon my 
administration might not be gratified, my happiness 
was assured, — ^for my life with Edith and my children 
constitutes my happiness. 

In his own words we find the confirmation 
that his wife was his inspiration and equal, a 
true companion for a great man, one like Vir- 

229 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

ginia Tracy's conception of the Queen of 
Sheba — ''fitted to be a King's mate." 

History has other examples of great men 
who foimd what Roosevelt found. One of the 
wonders of India is the famous Taj Mahal at 
Agra. It was from 1629 to 1650 in building, 
twenty-one years. The Temple was built by 
Shah Jehan as a memorial and tomb for his 
wife, Mtmitaz — i — Mahal. The bodies of the 
Emperor and his wife rest there side by side 
during the centuries. Theirs was one of the 
greatest loves of all times. It is doubtful if 
any wife had greater influence and inspiration 
with her husband than did this Oriental wo- 
man. ''The Taj is unquestionably the most 
. beautiful edifice of the Seventeenth Century, 
and the supreme achievement of Mohamme- 
dan art*' (New Int. End.). For all the world 
it stands as Man's greatest mommient to 
Woman and Wife. 

Peter the Great found in his second wife, 
Marta Skovronsky , a mate who seems to have 
attained the marriage ideal. The duration of 
their love is shown by the fact that she bore 

230 



ROOSEVELT ON MARRIAGE 

him eight children. She was not only his wife 
but also his councilor in affairs of state. 

The Brownings appeared to have realized 
the Ideal, notwithstanding that one of the 
pair was an invalid and almost a cripple. 

What Man has done, Man can do. The 
Ideal is the main thing. If we hold to it 
steadily, we will eventually become the Ideal. 



231 



CHAPTER XVIII 

WOMAN THE CENTER 

"Home is not a hearth but a Woman." Here 
is a remarkable statement I read years ago, 
but regret that I cannot remember the name 
of the writer. Regardless of who wrote it 
down, the phrase should stand as an imperish- 
able epigram. The more it is pondered over, 
the more convincing it becomes. The woman 
is in the home most of the time, superintends 
it, keeps it attractive, bears and rears the 
children, handles innumerable details, and, in 
the last word, is the home. The man is absent 
most of the day, he may be absent for months 
at a time, he may die, but while the woman 
lives, the home remains a home. A woman's 
significance to the home is often only realized 
when she dies or abandons it. The man for 
many reasons cannot take charge. He does 

232 



WOMAN THE CENTER 

not know how. Even if he could take time 
from his business he could not tmderstand 
many of the vexatious details of the household 
and is helpless when confronted with them. 
The first and only thing to do if he would hold 
the home together is to find another woman 
to take charge. Until then it is chaos. The 
substitute suflfices to maintain the home after a 
fashion, but not as the wife had done, tmtil at 
last the man finds that home means hardly more 
to him than a roost. And thus, for his children's 
sake or his own, many a widower or divorced 
man marries again, ''just to have a home.'' 

The woman, therefore, is the center arotmd 
which everything turns, from which nearly 
everything comes. The physical body of 
woman is and must ever be sacred as being the 
Temple of Life. It is also the Temple of 
Beauty and of Love, the vehicle through which 
comes the inspiration for most of the effort 
and achievement worth while. 

As Man's greatest inspiration is Woman, it 
naturally follows that his ideal conception of 
her is often so exalted as to be difficult for her 

233 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

to measure up to. Looked at in one way it is 
imfair to expect it of mortal Woman. But 
looked at in another it should be an inspi- 
ration to Woman to strive to realize Man's 
ideal of her. It is good to feel that it will be 
easier for women to do so as time goes on. 
Men are steadily developing more spiritually, 
and as they increasingly realize Woman's place 
in Nature, and all they owe to her for her limit- 
less devotion and sacrifice as wife, mother and 
comrade, their ideal will become not less 
beautiful but more practical and stable, im- 
pelling them to strive more to do their part and 
to be worthy of an ideal wife. Although some 
ideals may be impossible of complete accom- 
plishment, yet to strive towards them de- 
velops character and brings us always nearer 
to them. The true spirit of Love is expressed 
in these two lines by Ella Wheeler Wilcox : 

The golden glory of Love's light may never be raine, 
But I will be worthy of it. 

It is not too much to say that even the best 
that men can give is not good enough for the 

234 



WOMAN THE CENTER 

women who are the makers of their homes, the 
mothers of their children, and the sources of 
their inspiration. 

Heart Rest 

Through the magical power of words men 
are often awakened to the pressure of certain 
world needs which they had only vaguely felt 
before. And then the well-chosen words which 
define a great world need become a kind of 
channel for constructive thought force, direct- 

I ing thought to the study of the conditions 
involving that world need, and later to the 
knowledge of the means that can bring relief. 
Such a magical phrase is one among many 

i that occur in Bulwer-Lytton's great novel, 
Zanoni, where the sage Zanoni says to the 
ambitious and talented artist, Glyndon, ''The 
heart must rest, that the mind may be active/' 
One of the world's greatest needs is stated in 
thos^ simple words. How much of the mental 
unrest in the world is because so many hearts 
are not at rest ! Mental unrest means lack of 
concentration on work and duties, and that in 

235 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

turn means retardation of world output, of 
world achievement ; the postponement of that 
happier time when economic conditions will be 
better adjusted and life will be easier and fuller. 
All great thinkers arrive at the same con- 
clusions when they think along similar lines; 
whether by means of a higher form of tele- 
pathy, or because of that essential tmity of 
consciousness which is a logical necessity in all 
philosophic reasoning. It is therefore signifi- 
cant to note that Bulwer's poetic conception 
of a great world need is stated in different 
words but in exactly the same sense by a purely 
scientific writer. Thus Havelock Ellis says : 

While it is perfectly true that sexual energy may be in 
large degree arrested, and transformed into intellectual 
and moral forms, yet it is also true that pleasure itself, 
and above all, sexual pleasure, wisely used and not 
abused, may* prove the stimulus and liberate? of our 
finest and most exalted activities. 

Here may be cited the famous case of the 
mathematician to whom came the long-sought 
solution of a problem during the ecstasy of 
sexual union. Superficial criticism of this 

236 



WOMAN THE CENTER 

case has said that the man cared less for his 
wife than for his problem. But deeper analy- 
sis suggests the reverse. The completeness of 
their physical tinion not only symbolized but 
attained for a moment that actual unity of 
Consciousness which all great philosophies 
recognize as eternally present in that Divine 
Mind in which we all ''live, move and have our 
being," and in which are all knowledge and all 
wisdom, and the solutions of all problems. 

All who have had real and transcendent love 
experiences, perhaps only one in their lives 
thus far, value those memories more than any 

I other memories, and would not blot them out 

I for anything the world could offer. Such 
experiences leave not only beautiful and ele- 
vating memories, but also true expansions of 
consciousness which represent a permanent 

I gain in each one's individual evolution. 
The experience of Ages has shown that 

I hearts can only find rest on other hearts. 
Blessed are the men and women who have 

j found that perfect mutual heart rest. Pro- 

Ivided that economic stress is not too hard, 

i 237 



MARRIAGE AND EFFICIENCY 

their lives are constantly irradiated by the 
soft glow of that tmquenchable sacred fire. 
The storms of the world pass them by. Their 
only sadness is that so many others have not 
found what they have f otmd. But as their own 
perfect love gives them a wider understanding 
of the world's need, so they look with wider 
vision on the married inharmony outside their 
charmed circle. They realize that as ignorance 
and selfishness are gradually overcome, and as 
men and women learn that only by giving out 
love can they ever truly receive love, thus will 
other men and women come at last into their 
divine heritage, and those hearts also will then 
be at rest. 



In conclusion I leave with you what seems 
to me the highest thought which bears on the 
love of Man and Woman. That thought I 
find in Tagore's The Infinite Love, a great 
poet's conception of a love that grows and 
gathers power, life after life, Age after Age, 
whose source is in the Cosmic Consciousness 
Itself, *' before beginning and without an end." 

238 



WOMAN THE CENTER 
THE INFINITE LOVE 

TAGORE 

I have ever loved thee in a hundred forms and times, 

Age after age, in birth following birth. 

The chain of songs that my fond heart did weave 

Thou graciously did take around thy neck, 

Age after age, in birth following birth. 

When I listen to the tales of the primitive past, 

The love-pangs of the far distant times. 

The meetings and the partings of the ancient ages — 

I see thy form gathering light 

Through the dark dimness of Eternity 

And appearing as a star ever fixed in the memory of all. 

We two have come floating by the twin-currents of 
love — 

That well up from the inmost heart of the Beginning- 
less. 

We two have played in the lives of myriad lovers, 

In tearful solitude of sorrow, 

In tremulous shyness of sweet union, 

In old, old love ever renewing its life. 

The on-rolling flood of the love eternal 

Hath at last found its perfect final course. 

All the joys and sorrows and longings of heart, 

All the memories of ecstasy. 

All the love-lyrics of poets of all climes and times 

Have come from the everywhere 

And gathered in one single love at thy feet. 

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